Week felt really meeting heavy, will work to fix this as it has meant a lot less time working with a physical output.
(note to self - its ok to work on other things).

Monday
A lot of meetings today, the first is the usual wider team where we share all of our plans for the week (and do a quick summary of the past week).
In the afternoon, running through a show-and-tell, held across all U.C. locations - Leeds, Manchester and London via SRS - Skype Room System (I learnt the meaning today, and then forgot it instantly).

Tuesday
Played a part in a retro with all of Universal Credit’s design team, always interesting - hearing things we’d like to work on and realising there is a lot of cross-over from London to Leeds branches.

Facilitated an interview in the afternoon for an interaction design position.

Wednesday
Worked on updating the prototype, heavily led from last weeks UR, providing a simple “next steps” to aid the user is a quick and easy win to start the changes and to provide the user the feeling of being listened to!
To echo previous words - working to get ahead of sprints so we have time to test and change as often as needed without becoming a blocker.

Thursday
Sat in a run-through of all the UR feedback of the past couple of weeks - plenty to work on, but also plenty of good things said by the users.

Had a meeting with Head of Design (U.C) about supporting new starters, something I am passionate about and will focus more time on in the future.

Friday
Half day catching up with emails, going through the amends for the DWP blog from the content team here, and arranging meetings to run through some minor amends to the prototype.

Afternoon spent using flexitime, taking the kid to Bridlington and spending vast sums on trying to win teddy bears!

For your info - turns out Emma is incredible at winning things and I’m terrible.

Good things
I’ve said it before, but having flexitime is such a bonus working here. It allows my work and life balance to join up brilliantly and shows me this place is really a good for me!

Learned things
Working amongst developers and QAs is such a great experience - I’ve done this many many times (even being a developer), but seeing them discussing design and knowing that UX is a team-sport.

Difficulties
Meetings! Context switching is always tough, but will be working on doing less meetings and getting down to doing more of that design stuff (just to stress - this isn’t a normal week).

Achievements
Even though, with all these meetings - it really feels now design is fully understood and valued, and the design team I work with should be so proud of what we have achieved.

---