Lifestream

March has been a good month.

I am going to be a little bit vague in the details and stick to the “design things”.

I kicked off the month creating a research plan and doing observations of staff performing their role so we could investigate behaviour change and system issues affecting their roles.

Observations were conducted in one stream. In the other stream we asked staff members (for one week) to complete a simple form after each task (tasks can be a minimum of 30mins but could extend all day in extreme cases). The form told us the nature of the work they were doing and some details around decision making.

This allowed us to compare “observed vs self-observed measurements”, and to tie our quantitative and qualitative data together.

Through this data we got a realistic picture of:

• What work staff were doing
• Who they were doing the work for
• How challenging they found the work
• How they decided to resolve the work
• If they required help to complete the task.

Finally we gave the staff an option to tell us how we could make this task easier for them next time.

This data gave us the perspective from the staff about their role and environment. We compared this data with the observation data to help determine where there are gaps in training and how we can better support staff in their role.

Next we looked at the environment and pressures on the individuals to better understand their behaviours and where we could influence bad behaviours and encourage good behaviours.

Finally we looked at the work demand. What are people actually doing, where is this demand coming from and is this the right work at the right time? This data was invaluable for us to identify system issues that drive unexpected tasks or place pressure on individuals that the wider business is unaware of. Or in some instances is generating busy tasks or additional work we could look to remove through better processes and systems.

It’s felt good this month to finally be back working on things that directly make a difference and influence change. Service Design & System Design isn’t just about pretty diagrams and talking to stakeholders it’s about getting stuck in, doing the hard work and making change happen.

February began by signing up for a write course on plain language, right here in Wellington. I would throughly recommend the course, it gave me the tools I needed to structure intent through my writing which had been muddled in the past. This issue would often mean a point I thought was clearly expressed was not clear at all.I will endeavour to continue working at this, hopefully the blog is a great place to practice.

A large part of my free time this month has been taken up by writing book pitches for publishers. I really believe passionately in my book but times are hard and I am not a “known” designer in my field so it seems finding a suitable publisher could be harder than I first thought. It is partly my own fault, Through out my career I have had many ideas and think deeply about problems I have encountered. In the past I have convinced myself other people probably wouldn’t be interested in my solutions, so I have not shared them beyond my immediate designer friend group. As I have gotten older I’ve begun to see that other people don’t think quite like I do and I’ve come to realise that maybe my voice is worth sharing a little wider.

Attending the writing course and focusing on my weaknesses helped me find my own voice in my writing. I struggle to write about myself on the blog, finding it far easier to write about design or other occurrences. This is also an issue when I use social media.

It’s my hope as I continue to keep developing my writing capabilities I will get better at sharing new ideas that I previously wouldn’t have shared, which seems like quite a good outcome for this month.

My blog has been a little stagnent since I moved to New Zealand a few years ago. Its amazing how much it takes out of you to build a new life with very few support systems and friends around, but I finally feel like I am starting to get on top of things again. I figured month notes would be a good way to start recording my thoughts and ideas without feeling like it was becomming too burdensome to keep up with.

Work stared off at pace this year, we are testing a new system for front-line staff through an iterative test and learn approach. In most countries its a standard practice to do some iterative testing, but alas working in the New Zealand Government it can feel lilke you have stepped back in time, this isn’t somthing you see that often. I have hopes that if we run this test well we can continue to encorage best practices in this space and make strides forward.

In my personal time I have been pushing forward writing my book on Service Design, things are going really well and I think I will soon be ready to speak to publishers. Pulling together 6-7 years of personal research, notes, examples, new approaches and thinking has not been a small task. Logsec has been a blessing here, I was really struggling to align my thinking into cohesive patterns and logic that I could simply explain to others.

The act of writing itself is addictive, and I have come up with a great way to steal time and fit writing in between life things. I use Scrivner to write the book on my iPad and Mac, the data syncs across dropbox which is super helpful to steal time and whip out the iPad when travelling or at lunch. Similarly Logsec for pulling together my research notes and making sense of them ready to be written up is working well. I think I struggled working out how to write a non-fiction book in the beginning because it felt like too many steps all at once, unlike a blog post which can be around a single idea, a book can be about many things all at once. I’ve learnt that it is important to have a space where you organise your ideas and determine their priority and connections with a separate space to formalise those ideas into something teachable. I’m definately learning as I go, and I’ve booked myself on several writing courses next month hoping to improve my technique and approach further.

I rounded out the month by going on holiday for a week to New Plymouth. My son loves boogie boarding and there are some great beaches there. So while the family bounced around on the waves I relaxed with a beer, and read a few good books. A holiday was a great way to start off the new year…Maybe I’ll make this a regular thing!

I am going to be returning to blogging this year. It’s gotten a little dusty around here, so I’m cleaning the cobwebs and fixing up the broken things.

I’ve removed all the RSS feeds and consolidated them in to one single feed, that will comprise of my articles and notes, I didn’t have a lot of people subscribing, but if you were one of those people (thankyou!) you may need to resubscribe to the new feed.

I enjoyed running an IndieWeb Server and learning so much while doing it, however I have decided to cut down my social media presence online. It’s too much to manage and I don’t have time to do the things I love. Thankfully when I started that journey I built everything in such a way that I could keep the old content and turn it all off.

Instead, moving forward, I will post my thoughts and ideas here, with the occasional use of Bluesky here and there when the mood takes me. I am even hoping to try and do month notes if my new schedule allows it.

Some of the re-design will be in the open and you might notice a few dangly bits. Will do my best to keep it respectful :D

Just a quick update on the redesign, while this is happening all my #micropub #syndication and #webmention functions are paused.

I won’t be sending or recieveing content for a while as I move the main pillars of the website around.

The easiest way to follow my content during this period is to subscribe to my RSS feed.

Playing whack-a-mole with a few bugs and being a grown-up, before racing to the fun redesign stuff. Being a grown-up is hard.

Today is new Macbook Pro day! Finally got my data migrated from the broken machine and I am back in business, itching to get started on the blog.