25 June 2021
Good people
Every Monday, our designers come together for a small sharing session instigated by Chanelle & Beth called “Monday Motive”. Using a simple template in Miro we share a photo from the weekend, our main goal for the coming week, and something we’re either fearing or looking forward to. It’s a nice start to the week 📆
I had a chat with dxw friend Jack, who’s doing some product management work with us. It was good to hear his perspective on the things that are working well on the project, and the areas that are more challenging. Later in the week I watched the same delivery team’s sprint one show-and-tell; it was one of those where there was a healthy show/tell ratio 💻
If you’re interested in becoming a dxw friend, you can apply via our website .
I joined a pitch for some new business that featured some quite challenging questions from the client. It was heartening to see how colleagues were more than able to calmly and confidently respond to the unexpected ❤️
I had my final 1:1 with our service designer Marcin, who’s off to pastures new. Our relationship was the first where I’ve been someone’s manager and never been able to spend a single minute with them in the flesh. Hopefully we’ll meet one day but until then, powodzenia Marcin! 👋
Good work
The working week began with listening in to a sprint planning session for one of our projects with Homes England. It’s a short discovery so it’s important that we plan wisely to make the most of the time. I was really pleased to see how much alignment there was from the very beginning of the session, and the project’s weeknotes confirmed the good early chemistry in the team.
We’re submitting a bid to do some HCD training with a charity. Training is a thing our strategy team have done a lot of and as part of these programmes I’ve run a few prototyping workshops. It’s always fulfilling to give people a toolkit for making their organisation more human-centred — for some folks it’s a peep behind the curtain, and any time we can demonstrate that being able to do design is not a divine gift or a dark art, that’s a good thing.
Skills transfer is a thing that happens on many of our projects too — sometimes very deliberately, but other times it’s more subtle and organic. On these occasions, we’re often able to learn almost as much as we teach 👩🏫
It was the monthly dxw all-staff show and tell this week. We had some fab talks, covering how we make accessible accessibility reports from Calum, how to build your confidence as a writer and speaker from John, and an update from Vee, Isobel and Morrighan on our company wellbeing strategy.
Good stories
I had my second coronavirus vaccination! It made me more ill than the first! 🙀 I was fine all afternoon, then when I got into bed I was shivering uncontrollably. Woke up several times in the night drenched in sweat, throwing off the duvet then shivering with cold again. Then eventually woke up with a pounding headache. Yuck. 💉🦠
I’m quite used to a variety of critters showing up to the buffet we lay on in the garden for the birds, but I was tickled to see this squirrel chomping on a strawberry on the garage roof 🍓
Apropos of nothing, some advice for folks at the start of their careers: if you’re at all able, try to save up “f*ck off money”. It’s a huge investment in yourself and your future to know you can afford to walk away from a work environment that’s harmful, or that gradually chips away at your confidence, or forces you to go back on your own principles.
Back to grey, mizzly skies here in Essex, just in time for the weekend…
☔️ C-A-L-I, summer is gone…☔️
Bye! 👋 💚