Weeknotes S9 Ep4

Hooray for sunshine

Another swift week as the MedTech project comes to an end. Josh was off which meant less collaboration on our outputs but I still managed to use the time to expand our systems map with some additional information, and to extend that into some ideation. I’m glad I did because it helped me to feel more ‘slotted in’ to workshops with the wider team later in the week.

A section of our systems map

I’ve used my time to pull all of our systems work into one large word document with all of the relevant screenshots and all of the detail, and towards the end of the week was able to start thinning this out into our final report (in a ppt). This kind of editing is another good flow state for me.

The report is due to policy stakeholders this Thursday, there’s still a lot to do but I’m confident I’ve done enough of our parts that the rest should be supporting the wider team with wording etc.

What happened?

• A final UR interview
• Sprint show and tell on Tuesday
• More workshops with the Hippo crew including a discovery insights ‘test’ using this definition by Scott Colfer on the MoJ blog, and then writing How Might We questions. A further, in-person ideation session on Thursday.

From Scott’s blog post, product discovery defines a problem by Is there a problem? Is it valuable to solve? Is it feasible for us to solve? Is it urgent? Is it pervasive? Are users solving it themselves? Has someone else solved the problem?

What was good?

• In the office on Thursday morning so got to see Hayley in person for our 1:1 which hasn’t happened for a while for *reasons* but which I felt like I needed.
• Hayley talked me through my next project which should start in May, I’m looking forward to it.
• Lunch with Tina and Anil on Thursday on our way to Holborn, it was really nice to spend more time together just chatting and getting to know them a bit better.
• I moved my non-working day after having interviews to attend last week, which meant by serendipity that it coincided with a free day off my husband had been given, and it was sunny and warm in the sunshine. We went to the Cambridge Botanic Gardens and wandered around the town for some lunch, and it was very needed.

Some photos from the botanic gardens: some blossom-like pink flowers, an alo vera in a perfect spiral and a view of a greenhouse through glass that makes it look like a pond reflection.

What was hard?

• Everything is feeling very rushed at this point and because of that there are increasing numbers of unsustainably long workshops which are draining and occasionally cause slightly fractious exchanges. Teamwork is hard generally and I’m wondering how we could have implemented a more sustainable pace.
• That ability to concentrate through a long workshop also brings other worries (hello ADHD). In our workshops this week we bounced from insights, through tests (prioritisation) through to ideated How Might We’s, then on to ideating on those prioritised How Might We’s. I’m not saying you can’t do this all in a day and a half, but it’s definitely not a comfortable place for me. I tend to believe that Problem Statements and How Might We questions require some significant crafting before you should release them into ideation, we haven’t had that luxury.
• On Scott’s discovery ‘tests’ as outlined above I’m not entirely sure that the team used this in the right way, the questions are reeeeeally useful, yes, but they are set up in a wider context of expectation around how discoveries are undertaken, this section stands out:

“All discoveries are research. But not all research is discovery. We do not need to label all research as ‘discovery’. We only call research ‘discovery’ when we’re exploring a single opportunity, trying to figure out if and why we should build a product.”

• So using this list as a set of ‘tests’ for smaller problem statements within a discovery that is examining the general issues around the possibility of something existing is possibly not the right approach. In this kind of use the question of feasibility becomes absolutely frought; rife with opinion, risk aversion and bullishness meaning that it is really difficult to reach anything approaching consensus. What am I saying? I guess…feasibility is not something you decide in a workshop? How do you satisfy a group that maybe feel that the things that they need to ideate aren’t feasible and make that useful. And yep, maybe feasibility becomes clearer in later phases, but you also have to make a case to spend money in those later phases. I don’t know, maybe process is confused, maybe I am.

And what else?

• Still absolutely no idea what is happening in Severance.
• Bought tickets to see St Vincent at Somerset House later in the summer.
• Nearly finished my first ever wholly made-by-me granny square blanket

Ok that’ll do, see you next week.