Weeknotes – series 03 episode 02

Week 2 at Swirrl started on Tuesday after the Easter bank holiday weekend and the amazing UK weather.

Looking for data designers

I'm looking for people who are using user-centred design and research techniques to build open data publishing services and tools, so if that sounds likes you, please get in touch!

Meeting more of the team

I made it to the office in Manchester by 11am after a 6am start in Swansea. I'd arranged a few meetings with the some more of the team, including data consultant Julija and fellow designer Guy.

I spent a long time in particular chatting with Guy. It sounds like we have a lot in common – we both like striving for simple, progressively enhanced, accessible designs.

Guy's skills sound more technical than mine, closer to that of front-end developer. He's busy improving the Publish My Data pattern library. He's been busy adding automated visual testing with storybook.

I also met Sarah. Sarah is responsible for communications, organising events, customer training, and blogging at Swirrl. I'm hoping I can work closely with Sarah to help out with events and blogging – and learning what she know about our users.

I've been catching up with lots of her blog posts, including this one about mapping data ecosystems, which introduced me to this mapping data ecosystems tool by the ODI (Open Data Institute).

More wandering around Manchester

I managed to visit the Magma book shop one evening. I used to visit the one near Covent Garden a lot when I was in Uni in Ealing. It sells very nice design books, magazines and posters. If you ever want to buy me a present, I would like everything they sell.

Trip to London

On Thursday I was in London to meet some data people at Department for International Trade with Jamie. We tried not to get too excited about the amazing views over Westminster. I also bumped into a couple of friends from ONS (Office for National Statistics).

Working from home

Friday was my first day working from home. The plan is, once things have settled down, I'll be doing most of my work remotely from home in Swansea. I'd spent a few days before I started at Swirrl setting up the home office.