Weeknotes scrapbook

Sometimes things resonate

I am a serial screenshotter, but I’m very bad at keeping track of things and remembering why I took the screenshot in the first place. I’m also in some ways mourning some of the connection that medium used to foster in the weeknotes community as everything has diffused somewhat now, so in attempt to bring people close and also to reflect on what I’ve got, I’m going to bring them here in what I’m calling my Weeknotes scrapbook*.

Steve Messer talks strategy

In this weeknote Steve references another post by Dan Hill, Observations on Product Management.

I’m trying to get into the mindset I had when I read this but I think it comes down to preconceived ideas about what ‘strategy’ is supposed to mean, the baggage but also privilege that comes with being seen as a strategic. I think I’ve often come across people with one of the points above, but having both is rarer. I reflected on my ability to do the second point, and wondered if this is something I want to improve.

Vicky Teinaki talks about a user panel

In this post Vicky talks about a user panel run from within the Student Loans Company for people eligible for Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA). I think I screenshotted this because I was intrigued by the model (which sounds awesome) and some of the detail about how students stay on the panel for 2 years and are paid for their time. These kinds of panels provide such an incredible opportunity to get feedback on work in progress and to help people feel involved in services that are relevant to them, so I’ll be looking out for more examples of this kind of work.

Screenshot reads: “I’d forgotten to mention that just before I went to Finland I ran a Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) user panel session. These were set up a bit over a year ago, when panel of around a dozen people who have had DSA attend a remote session every 3 months to give feedback on something we are doing. They stay on the panel for 2 years and are paid for their time. We also have panels for general student finance. I don’t usually run them but we had a lot of UXers on holiday so I jumped in to plan and facilitate the session.”

Vicky also talks about prototyping in code

In the same blog post Vicky talks about leaving this role having not completed a target to enable the team to prototype in code. Firstly it’s just nice to read someone else not quite managing to push something throu, and being honest about that is great. But Vicky’s inclusion of #ThingsThatNeedToHappen to make it work was really interesting to me as I’ve had a tendency to believe that we mostly have people able to access ‘the right tools for the job’ — which I see now is probably naïve.

I also reflected on the fact that this is not something I have much experience of. Actually as a service designer I have limited experience of creating prototypes and while I don’t think I need all the front end stuff I definitely feel I could learn more about the Government design system and patterns.

Screenshot reads: “The one thing that I didn’t successfully get to happen in my time at SLC was getting a proper process in place for doing research using the GOV.UK prototype kit. While our team can download the code and run it locally on their laptops, there is no process for hosting code openly (a of 2024 the organisation does not code in the open) or having the prototypes online for testing (the current solution is Axure Cloud for Axure wireframes, which is more like hosting Figma prototypes online than code).”

Lennart Nacke shared a research crib sheet on LinkedIn

In this post many studies are broken down, I saved this because I thought it might come in useful later, and I’ve saved it to my resources Trello so it doesn’t get lost.

A digram showing different types of research methods, quaitative and quantitative and when to use them

Stephanie Leary shared this great visual about ‘glue work’

I’ve often come back to my propensity for ‘glue work’ and this LinkedIn post by Stephanie, referencing Dave Stewart helps to demonstrate this with a great visual.

Screenshots, the first reads “ “The work is never just ‘the work’” by Dave Stewart is obviously modeled around consulting projects, and it is something I learned the hard way over ten years of freelancing. But I think it’s true of in-house projects as well — you still have to get approval, funding, and time allocated somehow, even if the proposal is an informal chat with your boss rather than a polished document.” the second is a set of post it notes between post it notes showing all the extra places where work takes place.

I like the steps as outlined here;

• The work around the work (meetings, reviews, project management)
• The work to get the work (research, scoping, pitching)
• The work before the work (setup)
• The work (actual work) and the work between the work (iteration, maintenence)
• The work beyond the work (changes, omissions)
• The work outside the work (surprises, disasters, contingency)
• The work after the work (BAU, processes, ongoing support)

I’ll keep reviewing my screenshots and add to these resources as I get them.

*Scrapbooks can be messy and this one is also messy, no I don’t know why the screenshots are various sizes, and yes I could go and resize and make everything look perfect but this is not the intention behind this work.