Weeknotes – series 07 episode 11

Refining business requirements

I've spent most of this sprint refining and iterating on some new business requirements that the team are being asked to work on. It's been nice to work on something new, after at least 6 months of reworking something old.

It's not glamorous work, but effort spent here will help us later on.

I've been guilty of jumping straight into the design phase before (as in: making journey maps and prototypes). So I've tried to be more disciplined this time, and not moving on until we've had a chance to invite comments from across the team. And then to capture these as acceptance criteria.

Working in this way has helped me to see the scale of the work, and break it down into a few epics.

Alongside this, I've been looking at…

past user research and designs
similar patterns across our department
getting accessibility advice about specific components
investigating the technical and data constraints

There seems very little room for manoeuvre between all the constraints and often the work feels like trying to find a way through a maze.

Still, understanding this all up front, means the design work is going to be much quicker. And we can focus on making it better for users.

I feel like we're at the right point now to start looking at the interaction and content design of the page. And that this will help us understand more about the problem.

A uses page

I've created a uses page. It's a list of all the tools (software and hardware) that I use for interaction design. Hopefully others will find it useful, or might just like to have nose around. It was inspired by Wes Bos.

X-GOVUK show and tell

Frankie hosted a show and tell to share some of the cool stuff that the cross-government community (X-GOVUK) are working on. It was part of services week.

I'm a big fan of X-GOVUK and the tools look very useful. The Nunjucks prototype filters look especially cool.

Sadly I didn't make session, but Frankie kindly shared the slides.

Design system for Wales show and tell

Perago and CDPS (Centre for Digital Public Services) hosted a mid-discovery show and tell on their design system for Wales project.

I really enjoyed the session, and it was a great example of working in the open, and also not jumping to conclusions. Even though I don't work on Welsh services I feel really excited that this piece of work is happening. Can't wait to hear more.

Twenty Twelve

I've been rewatching Twenty Twelve – a BCC sitcom about the organising team behind the 2012 olympics in London.

If anything, I think I'm enjoying it more the second time around. They really nail what it's like to work in the public sector. I feel like it hits its stride in series 2. This episode is great.