New team and some great gigs

A weeknote starting 30 September 2024.

Service assessment

First off, we’ve had some good feedback about how the service assessment went. Certainly not expecting that we’ll meet everything. But it probably wasn’t quite the disaster I thought it was.

We will have to wait another week or two for the actual result though.

New team, new service

I switched to a new team / service and it’s been quite a full on week. It’s adjacent to the work I’ve been doing for the past 18 months so not a complete reset.

Going well

Interesting problem to solve
Lots of documentation about the problem; including user research notes that describes the users, pain points and needs throughly
Great team of UCD people
Regular in-person user research and team planning days in the calendar

Going less well

Wider department are unfamiliar with working with UCD people and processes (Andrew’s post about justifying UCD’s impact arrived just in time)
Pressure to move quickly and feed the devs with work
No existing prototype kit setup, and some hoops to jump through to get access to a repo
Lots of new people and news ways of working slowing down delivery
I can see a lot of potential accessibility challenges in the design, think we’ll need to get on top of those quickly even if it’s just documenting them so everyone is aware

Overall, I'm feeling positive and I think the team has been setup for success. Exciting times ahead.

Live music

Since my last weeknote I’ve seen some amazing gigs. Probably the best run of live shows I’ve been to all year. Including a few unplanned ones which is always a bonus.

Recommend checking out Melin Melyn (welsh for yellow mill) if you can. I managed to grab a "prop" from their show – a torn-up eviction notice letter from their fictitious landlord. They somehow manage to deliver a hysterically goofy concept show, with catchy pop songs, whilst also being amazingly talented singers and musicians. It's something that works much better live than it probably sounds on paper.