Weeknote 15: back again

Week ending 21/04/23

Just when I was on the verge of abandoning weeknoting on the basis that I don’t feel like I have enough of interest to share, and anything interesting that does happen is often not possible to share, two things happened:

1. I was reading an interesting thing Giles Turnbull published on different formats for blog posts looking for inspiration and ideas and I noticed my own weeknotes referenced as an example of a “answer the same question every week” format. I didn’t actually realise I did this but probably arrived at it to minimise the need to think too much. I’d really recommend Giles’s article btw — its full of good ideas that I’d like to try at some point.
2. I discovered that one of my blog posts is being used as a case study in a Neilson Norman Group (NNG) course about Product & UX. It’s a course which requires you to part with actual money. For this reason I’m not sure how my post relates to the course content, but it’s certainly been good for the vanity metrics.

While it’s mildly alarming to think people might paying for access to my ‘wisdom’, it has given me the motivation to keep going for a while longer.

Back to the dull but trusty ‘answer the same question every week’ format:

What went well?

• We’re preparing for usability testing the women’s health content we’ve developed. As a team we’ve prioritised all the questions we had and a discussion guide has now been trialled on two internal participants to check our approach is working as intended. It’s been useful to do these run throughs as it prompted some good discussions and refinements to questions and tasks
• There were loads of people in the office in London on Tuesday, the busiest I’ve seen it for a while. Had quite a few incidental discussions with people which is always helpful and reduced the need for about four Teams calls later in the week
• There are lots of things edging closer to completion/publishing. Lots of context switching required to keep on top of all of them and not lose momentum but it is feeling like we’re making quick progress on a range of things now
• Successfully finished some stakeholder negotiations and got the result I was hoping for. This does not always happen.

What went less well?

• Spent too long agonising over whether some questions I’d asked in a meeting might have been seen as unhelpful when they were intended to be constructive and supportive
• Went down a rabbit hole thinking about the difference in how our teams see the purpose of our content (a focus on user needs) and how communications teams see it (somewhere to signpost to as part of a campaign) and how those two things are often not aligned. This is a regular challenge for both us and comms colleagues and I may stay in this rabbit hole for a while
• People are leaving. It’s inevitable when your organisation goes through major change that people will choose to go, but I’m sad to be losing good colleagues who I’ve enjoyed working alongside. I’m mainly pleased for them and the exciting new roles they’re leaving for, but it’s a big loss for us.

Coming up next week

• Usability testing for women’s health. Lots of policy colleagues have signed up to observe which is great. They’ve never done this before so I’m preparing some guidance on what to expect / what to do/ not do.