Document - 18 to 22 May
What was good
A lot of design work - if design includes documenting and communicating, which I think it does.
I’ve been preparing us for the next content update to the framework at the end of the month. As usual, we share the upcoming changes with the capability leads across government in advance so they can prepare to change their own systems, if they want to keep aligned. Received some nice feedback on how valuable this was, and some ideas for improving what’s communicated next time. Content design gold, I tell ya.
I’m also trying something new. As we’re fully updating a role, I’ve been looking at how we can do more to help content designers understand the changes, which seem quite big on the surface.
The lead of the working group has drafted a great blog post explaining the work, and I’ve signed up to support heads of content with making some materials to help people re-map their existing evidence to the new skills. So I’ve been sketching simple tables and visuals to show how the new skill descriptions relate to the old ones. I’m also considering how we can help people access the previous skill descriptions if they need them, for example using the UK Web Government Archive version.
Also this week, and very timely for Digital Accessibility Week, we received the results from the independent accessibility audit of the two websites we’re responsible for. As expected each one has a couple of small issues, so I’m hopeful these can be fixed ASAP. Overall, though, the results were really positive (better than expected?), with several shoutouts for good practice so am very proud of the team’s efforts, past and present.
The report also has includes helpful ‘observations’ to improve user experience. As an example of how thorough they were, although we had praise for our well structured CSVs which include text in cells with no data, they suggested even more descriptive text we could use. That’s my kind of attention to detail.
I usually try to keep Friday mornings clear for ‘documentation and community stuff’. This Friday, I somehow managed to make that most of the day, which was really satisfying. In particular, I spent the afternoon identifying and writing up the rationale for changes to the design skills. I’ll then share this with the heads of design group, again to help their designers understand what has changed and why. A huge thank you to my previous self for keeping every single revision and decision since October in a single document.
On this theme, I successfully migrated our ‘content inventory’ data to Jira. The inventory contains the metadata and design history for the 300+ content objects we look after (things like individual role and skill descriptions, but also guidance content and even forms we use as part of our governance service). I’m sure my future self will be thanking me again for this before too long.
Finally, I was able to confirm I’ll be doing a session at Service Design in Government in September. The session will be on what we’ve learned from community-led governance and co-design for the framework over the last few years. Going to SDinGov was a big highlight from last year, so I am Very Excited and also Quite Nervous to actually be speaking there.
What was challenging
The team is still quite confused when it comes to defining and planning work in our new Jira world, and in the meetings about doing those things. I’m having to resist jumping in too much and making it more confusing and need to trust others to own their roles. I’m a) hopeful that from next sprint we will start to get in the groove and b) worried that a much larger ‘migration’ that’s coming our way is going to derail us.
I’ve once again failed to properly recognise and prepare for an upcoming super short week. But at least I’ve spotted the one immediately after that, promise.
Reading
The logic of conjecture, part 2: Wicked problems at systems scale - Mike Gallagher
How digital prevention services fit with neighbourhood health - NHS design histories
Re-shaping (public sector) user centred design for an AI assisted world - Leisa Reichelt