Weeknotes w/c 11.01.21 + 18.01.21
5 things that happened:
1] I started doing some user research with stakeholders of the GOV.UK design system. I started with the working group, who give feedback on submissions to the design system. I wanted to:
- introduce myself
- discover how they are feeling about being in the group
- find out what kind of community activity they would find useful
Inevitably, as I spoke to the Design System team, there were a million other things to do and messages that I had to pass on to the working group. It ended up turning into a hybrid user research/giving updates type of session, which was obviously not ideal. Though I got to meet some more understated heroes in government, which was brilliant. You know the type that go about their work silently, pottering away on extracurricular projects, making things much better for everyone else. I like those kind of people. It’s always nice to meet some more of them.
2] The Design System team do some brilliant work. They are constantly busy, building components, doing updates and thinking about what comes next. They are so busy that they don’t often get time to talk about it. They always have the intention to write blogs, do talks and run more workshops; but capacity always gets in the way. It’s a really small team, considering they design the system that powers services across the UK (and in many other parts of the world that adopt it). If an accessibility issue of user support request comes in, they have to deal with it ASAP.
Which means that I will need to step up to do some of the comms for the design system team. I certainly don’t mind doing some cheerleading, as the work the team does is brilliant. If you don’t know what the team does, there’s a really good talk (below) that show’s the depth of thought that goes into designing a service. We are just talking about one element of the design process here as well, accessibility.
3] Communities are all about working across boundaries. I really want to continue my work in that same vein as I enter the user-centred design sphere. I set up some chats with the head of design and head of service design at GDS, to see how the work I’m doing can help as many designers in government as possible.
I’m still doing a bit of a discovery on what’s needed (community-wise) in this space, but I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities to work together going forward.
4] I’ve been trying to get involved with discussions around how communities will function at GDS going forward. It’s good to know that there are lots of community-minded people working on this. I was able to set up communities right across Defra group in my previous role. The #Defra Communities Project was provided the right support, space and encouragement for communities to function across Defra group.
I’ve had a few chats and I’m hoping I can get more involved in the discussions at GDS. I am massively passionate about advocating for communities and it is one of the reasons I moved to GDS. It’s at a very similar stage to when we were setting things up at Defra and I feel my experience of setting a communities infrastructure up at another department very recently, could help. However there is a bunch of work that has already happened and some clear effort put in by several teams. I am going to have fight my natural instinct to force myself into the situation and try not to step on any toes. I’ve introduced myself, and I can share my insights if they reach out. Now, keep to yourself Imran.
5] I went to UK GovCamp for the first time! And my god it was as amazing as they say. Seriously, hats off to the organisers for putting this bumper edition together. They had around 450 people sign-up and did 3 full days of sessions. We did 1 day of sessions for GovCamp North and that was exhausting. To keep the energy and atmosphere up for 3 days is truly impressive.
There were so many of my public sector heroes there, being able to attend their sessions and interact with them was a joy. I attended sessions on Thursday and Friday. There were some great ones on communities on both days which were great to attend. There was also a super useful one on the design system on Thursday. I am going to be reaching out on Twitter trying to find organisations that use and modify the GOV.UK design system, to find out exactly what they adjust and why. The fact that the session was already there and essentially came to me was amazing.
I feel invigorated, energised and full of ideas after the sessions I attended. I’ve taken lots of notes from the organising for the next iteration of GovCamp North too. Thank you UK GovCamp organising team.
5 things I learned:
1] I need to check my assumptions. When I saw the list of working group members, I recognised a few from doing brilliant extracurricular things. The working group being another one of them. I assumed they would all be community minded and have lots of ideas for collaborative events and community activity we could do in this space.
Working groups are different to communities. And I shouldn’t have assumed that being part of a one will make you more pre-disposed to creating or taking part in community activity.
2] I learned how important visbility is when you are doing work that is wide-reaching. We always see working in the open as a ‘nice to have’ and ascribe it to a certain type of personality. But I’m realising it’s almost a responsibility when you work at an organisation that is connected to so many others. It can lead to better transparency of decision-making, encourage collaboration and lead to quicker adoption of new ways of working.
I’m not an expert in comms or working in the open though. So I will probably be seeking out some colleagues across government for advice on some basic strategies.
3] There’s a lot of scope for cross-Gov activity in the Design field. With the cross-gov user-centred design community on pause, the potential in the space is exponential. It would be really easy for me to create a GOV.UK design system community, but I’m not sure that’s what people want. I’m not even sure if that would be the best use of my time considering the virtual space that has opened up.
There’s been some Twitter chatter about the Leeds GovDesign meetup stopping as well. I may get involved in the next iteration of those, now that I am working more specifically in the design space. This is totally fair, as I know the organiser has been working for Kensington Council and has been keeping theses sessions going single-handedly for years.
The local nature of Leeds meetups has been great. We definitely built up a community of regular contributors and there has been lots of collaboration. I’m going to be having chat with the superhero that is Lisa Jefferey about this, but I’m wondering if a local design meetup is the way to go?
4] It’s hard to quantify the benefits of communities. Sometimes people want hard facts and number, and I understand why. We know communities of practice work, but people want to know the extent to which they make a difference. However, many of the advantages of communities are notoriously difficult to measure. We had a PhD student join us at Defra to work on measuring the benefits of communities, and we quickly realised that the measurement can become an industry in itself. A lot of the psycho-social benefits can only be measured via interviews and qualitative analysis. You would then have to add your numerical data-gathering to this.. because people like to see numbers.
That is just measuring a snapshot in time, what the benefits to community members were at ‘x’ moment. That is great for justifying your community to senior leaders, but not very helpful for a community lead that is looking to improve how things work. So then you need to also do a load of data collection on how to improve your community. That’s when things really start to get wild.
5] I loved my first UK GovCamp. The crowd, the sessions, the vibe. It really was everything it was billed to be. I was really glad I got to attend one, and whilst I was looking after my son on Saturday, I got to listen in on one or two of the sessions with my little boy on my lap. So whilst I miss the face to face interaction and the hugs, I loved being able to attend a UK GovCamp event on the weekend for the first time. Huzzah!
