Sad week, losing a really strong and clever Delivery Manager but he has given a lot of education to the team which we shall keep using and take us forward.

Really enjoyed this week again, loads of “doing” and team working. We’ve really worked well together, a healthy discussion on taking the service forward and a good understanding of what each role does. It’s less about stepping on toes, as more to understanding what-we-do.
Lovely stuff!

Monday
Stand-ups a plenty, standard Monday. Running through initial “edit user” information page, following on from the team’s design session with the B.A and content design to sense check. Upon running through, it did not really fit the service needs, this is exactly the design feedback I require and ways of working to improve myself and more importantly, the user’s service experience.

The afternoon was spent sketching user flows, and going through what patterns suit this page. Was great to do this, as initial planning is my favourite task of the design process!

Tuesday
Quiet day today, running through the prototype and sketching up user flows to help the team understand the issues of what we initially planned.

Always the way - you run away from a design workshop thinking you have all the answers, get to your desk and find out the questions do not align with the answers!

Wednesday
Early kick-off meeting - running through all the content feedback and design patterns check. Loads of little minor amends, but will add so much to the user experience - quick wins with huge value.

Finally - after 4 months of waiting… i’ve picked up all of my hardware to be a fully-fledged DWP worker!
I CAN SEE MY PAYSLIPS EASILY!
This pick up of hardware did mean a 2 hour tutorial on how to use the Surface Pro, which I’m maybe a tad late to learn this as its basically a windows machine - BUT parts of the meeting were about how to use the internal system which I 100% need to learn!

Thursday

The bus ran late - standard, so soon as I arrived it was Sprint Planning, but this team is so smooth now and we are in the days of bug fixing and automation - the planning is done in half the time.

As if coincidence, the Delivery Manager’s last week here, he has been a breath of fresh air - he has controlled the room during retros etc, and also provided a level of trust that is often overlooked as a DM. A role that is often missed is the role of keeping the team as happy as possible - whether it be work-wise or team personality clashes.. he has managed to do that very well.

Be hugely missed, but I did get his locker - so… win some lose some.

Last hour of the day - ran through the prototype with the content designer (Izzy), and we nailed it - we landed the big one! Did a very simple sketch of the user journey, Izzy changed one thing and saved a wasted page.

The power of doing good content eh?

Friday
As normal, quiet in the office. Stand up to confirm the prototype is ready to be written up properly in tickets on Jira (the developers know what’s coming from the previous meeting), will be doing a run-through Monday or Tuesday.

Great way to end the day by finishing the sprint task, and having many more lined up!

Good things
Realising you are wrong, and willing to fix it from other people’s ideas. This is a secret power that all designers should have, many people over the years have crossed my work out and come up with something much more clever - DWP has this in spades and something I try to promote and get everyone thinking!

Learned things
How powerful is good content on a page?
It saved me trying to mangle a user-flow into a longer journey, a simple phase from Izzy and the page vastly improved and cut down so much more work for both design, dev and more importantly - the user.
Great content makes my job so so much easier - value content more!

Difficulties
Understanding services is tough - there is not an easy way to get “it”, but have time and confidence to ask the easy or hard questions makes my job a lot easier and a lot more comfortable. This is a huge credit to the team.

Achievements
As a team - we did a thing that will be a great time saver for the users, AND they get what they wanted!
So many wins, from designing as a team to making the users happy, to avoiding user risk.

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