Edinburgh - 21 to 25 September
A full on week, mostly out of the office. Hence this very late weeknote.
Last week
I was up in Edinburgh from Tuesday to Friday for Service Design in Government.
This year, the theme was ‘democratising design’. Once again, it’s been a thought-provoking, energising and intense few days. Everyone has such expertise and is so open to chat. To me, it felt like an unofficial theme threaded through talks, workshops and corridor conversations was ‘how can we make services as human as possible?’.
I was lucky enough to be doing a talk myself, called ‘Power to the Profession!’. I took the audience through the governance of the capability framework and how we’ve ended up with a ‘democratic product’, where voting plays a part in our roadmap.
For my first conference talk, I think it went pretty well. People were very kind about it to my face, at least. I do think it was interesting for the audience to see behind-the-scenes and I had great followup chats about my provocations for how the governance could evolve.
Other good things:
- this year, I focused on going to the workshops and interactive sessions - it felt refreshing to be engaging my brain in a work-adjacent context
- I got to meet lots of designer colleagues at GDS I would never normally meet - everyone was lovely and had so much passion and care for making things better for people
- I run-walked up Arthur’s Seat early on Thursday morning - still feeling it now in the calves, but absolutely worth it
- inspired by a chaotic game run in one of the sessions, my teammate Flo and I sketched out the bones of a game we’re going to try and run for everyone on our next away day - 3 words: apocalypse, betrayal, allotment
Slide from Laura Yarrow’s excellent keynote, showing 5 design tests for more democratic services.
Hopefully we can get more of the team up there next year. My head feels quite chaotically stuffed full of ideas. I’ll need some time to reflect, distill and share what I learned.
Next week
We plan to put live the rebuilt frontend and new content management system for the framework - ideally users only notice the new domain name, an improved search and no downtime whatsoever, but expect the unexpected.
I’ll also be seeing about setting up the next few X-Gov Sheffield breakfasts.
Reading
Wall Labels Are in a Sorry State. Here’s How to Fix Them - Ben Davis
Metrics, measures and indicators: a few things to bear in mind - Steve Messer
Using agile practices in digital screening: lessons we’ve been learning - Christine Cawthorne
The fastest way to improve policy is to build it - Jamie Laing and Michal Charemza