Weeknotes 14–17 Apr 2020

This week we wrapped up prototyping and content design and worked closely with the devs to deploy the service and have it working on a live environment.

My cat seems fascinated by Figma’s connecting nodes. In this picture, it reminds me a bit of the spaghetti mess that was Facebook’s Origami a few years ago.

OK, new personal challenge, let’s see if I can write these weeknotes in less that 10 minutes, keeping in mind that perfectionism is the antidote to creativity and that writing something is better than nothing at all. I’ll do it Craig David syle (i.e., Monday, Tuesday, etc) with a touch of Tim Ferriss (Five-bullet-Friday) at the end. Excuse me if I type too fast.

Monday was a bank holiday, so it doesn’t count — what did I do? Can’t remember. Move on.

Tuesday The devs were busy building the new digital service. Unfortunately, we didn’t have any live code to test with yet, so we decided to postpone usability testing to next week. We had already tested the prototype recently and were already reaching data saturation. I emailed participants directly, explained the reason for the change and rearranged their sessions.

Wednesday Finished wrapping up all the content for the site in one document, updated the prototype just in case. Got everyone relevant to look at it, made comments, amends, got sign off and shared it again. In the evening, the first version of the site was up — exciting!

Thursday Bug hunting! Spent most of the day ‘catching bugs’ and prioritising them, so the devs could fix them. I also began updating our design system at Good Work Camden with the new branding.

Friday (to-day!) More testing, on different devices, viewports and operative systems. More bug hunting. Back and forth with the devs and getting others within the team involved to help us test.

Five bullets:

• What I’m re-reading — ‘Remote: Office Not Required’, by David Heinemeier Hansson. The book that started everything, way before every single Tech company on earth started writing guides to work remotely.
• What I want to read — This new manga comic about Service Design!!

• What I’m listening to — The Good Life Project podcast. Two episodes in particular, the one with DHH, ‘A Different Lens on Work’ (that’s how I decided to re-read his book) and the one with Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, ‘20 Tools to Tame Anxiety’.
• What I’m doing, in general — Taking long walks, yoga, meditation… trying to maintain mental and physical balance and look after myself so I can take care of and help others.
• Things I’m pondering — Working remotely can be great, if done correctly (that is, turning off Slack notifications and focusing on getting work done). I’m fantasising about moving somewhere quieter and nicer than London when all of this passes. Talking with others, I can see I’m not the only one. Where would you go?