2021 note number 3— week commencing 15 February 2021

Intro

Weekly notes from my time with the user centred policy design team at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

• Culled from end of week reflections with all the non-MHCLG stuff cut out and some edits to hopefully make them more understandable.
• This is a brain dump and not an exhaustive pick over every single activity from the week. Thoughts might cut off halfway, trail off or go off on one. There might be typos too. Sorry not sorry: Time.
• Views are mine and possible not the wider team’s or org’s.

The notes

I was off for two days at the start of the week. MHCLG thoughts still wiggled around in my head but I usually have a notebook on hand so I try to jot them down, part so my mind can move on to other things, part so I don’t forget what I was thinking. Might be useful, might be useless, but parks it for when I am back on this work. Here’s some examples.

Yes, my handwriting is awful.

I came back to the twilight days of the sprint, the retro/planning/show and tell days with some activities inbetween, mainly user research sessions. My first task back was looking at some change suggestions from the product owner for a page in the in-browser prototype. Easy enough to pull together, share, see if it’s OK and push so it could be used in the research sessions. Done.

Remember those sketches (above those previous two paragraphs)? Started to “explode” those, starting to look through what services help end users and what service support those services. General model to start with:

Having done some heads down designing and making work last week also a chance to pull back and look at what we have learned. Example: Some time with some of the team looking at the information we are displaying in the in-browser prototype (using our excellently pulled together real example, mentioned last week), working out what we had beforehand, what we had but need differently and what we didn’t have. Half data mapping exercise, half how to present information exercise. We did this remotely over a Team call, using Mural as a canvas. If you’re curious here’s a zoomed out grab.

Continued the “good” sessions with an hour on what is a good service description. Next week get this, with a good service name, into some written down guidance to review. Some more good sessions too, but checking through them.

Our show and tell prompted some healthy chats, one about meta models, another with the digital director reminding us to “stay true”.

Set off into this sprint mindful to spend less time in the in-browser prototype, see what we learn from research and then look at any design work then. Distil the value that mapping can bring and the value of having map to whatever users. Theory of change stuff comes into that.

Sat in some other show and tells in the department too, which were all excellent. Thinking openly in the department is always heartening to see.