Weeknotes  

Monday 05 Dec - Sunday 11 Dec 2022

Things I did

• Spent the day in a real office

  It has been a few weeks since I last ventured out of the house so when my lovely friend Kerry suggested a catch-up and coffee this week, I didn’t need asking twice.

  We were colleagues at the National Heritage Memorial Fund and became friends. She is now a Senior Content Designer at the Department for Education (DFE). Luckily for us, both our departments share the same office building in central Manchester.

  Over coffee she told me about work her team have been doing to help services Apply the Service Standard in DFE.

  I liked the printed cards and material they have produced for handing out or leaving in physical spaces.

  

  Time will tell how successful that will be but I think it is a good bet that people will remember that more than yet another link forwarded to them or added to an intranet page somewhere.

• Attended the User Centred Community meeting

  The regular meet-up for the design community I have been helping to run was back this week. It was nice to see more new faces which is a positive sign that tge fact our meet-up exists is starting to spread and that people want to join.

• Got a crash course in Figma administration

  Having worked with our head of digital delivery to procure Figma somebody needed to look after it. That somebody is now me.

  I’m fine with that but I’m slightly weary of Software as a Service (SaaS) tools like Figma from a governance point of view.

  My main concern is spiralling license costs if we are not careful. It is in Figma’s interest to make it super easy for colleagues to sign up, become part of your organisation and start collaborating with each other. From colleague’s perspective that is brilliant but from mine as admin, it means needing to keep tabs on it so that we don’t get hit with a big invoice.

  Figma’s ‘True up’ process seems to suggest this won’t happen but it still makes me a little nervous.

• Content design

  I spent some of the week trying write content intended to help people to understand the difference between where data is collected from and where it is found. The world of ‘data’ is full of terms which mean different things to different groups of people. For example, is a ‘source’ of data:

  • the organisation that produced the data,
  • the organisation that published the data, or,
  • is it simply the URL of the actual data file?

  There are many terms we use within the domain we work. We have to somehow be able to explain them and ensure we use them consistently.

• Turned 41 years old 🎈

  Friday was my birthday so at the behest of my better half, I booked the day off and we spent the day at Manchester’s Christmas Markets.

  

  We had a wander sampling tasty treats, drinking hot-chocolate and actually enjoying the freezing cold weather wrapped up warm in our big winter coats. As always, I remember how fortunate I am. Thankful and grateful for the life we have.

• Switched to Superdrug EasyMed

  I have a regular repeat medication prescription. Unfortunately for me, I have long term health conditions which mean I need to take 5 different pills each day.

  I worked in digital transformation at a pharmacy so I know a little more than the average person about what’s involved in fulfilling an NHS prescription and what to watch out for as a patient.

  Which has perhaps given me more confidence than most to try out a number of the online delivery pharmacies that have sprung up over the last 5 years, and I may just have found the winner.

  EasyMed from Superdrug is an attempt to not only send patient’s their meds in the post, eliminating a time consuming trip to the pharmacy but also to help them more successfully adhere to the prescribed regiment.

  I have to say, I’m very impressed! Typically meds are given or sent to you in god awful pill manufacturer boxes which are all different shapes, sizes and designs along with a bunch of advisory leaflets that are annoying to get out of the box.

  With EasyMed you get a box containing a spool of neat little pouches, each holds all of your dispensed medication tablets for ready the time you are supposed to take them.

  I love it! It is such a good piece of service design and product design. This must have been difficult to pull together, whilst meeting healthcare regulations and making it commercially viable.

  When its time to take your next meds, just pull out the next pouch, rip it off and easily tear it open. No awkward plastic blister packs of tablets. No counting how many you have left to take or trying to remember when you last took them.

  

  1. Prescribed time to be taken.
  2. Name of medication (Blurred here for privacy)
  3. Number of this medication tablets/pills that should be in the pouch.
  4. The shape of the tablet to help identify it.
  5. The number of the pouch. For example, I have 28 days worth of pouches. This is pouch number 1.
  6. The date the prescription was issued
  7. The dosage of the medication
  8. The colour of the individual medication tablet.

  If you take multiple medications each month on a repeat prescription then I can highly recommend EasyMed from my experience so far.

Things I read

• The Value of Horizontal Services - Tom Loosemore brilliantly articulates the need to work across rather than within the boundaries of government departments.

• I thought about that a lot - A new essay published each day in the countdown to Christmas.

• Sprints to Basecamp’s “Shape Up” methodology - When experiencing team growth, things you did yesterday often won’t work for today.

• Chris’s weeknotes S01E01 - A friend of mine has just started weeknoting.

• DFE Design Manual - I really like this from DFE. Lots of helpful content, some is specific to DFE and some helpful to anybody doing design in the UK Public Sector.

Things I watched

• Three CSS tips for working with inconsistently sized logos

• England lose to France in the Worldcup

Thanks for reading. Til next week.