Week notes, not weekly notes

View more work

Firstly I want to acknowledge that I have not added a post to this blog since the 7th February. A lot has happened between then and now, including having to reconcile with the fact I am simply not wired to write a week note, every week. My mental health has been patchy, family life has been eventful, work incredibly busy and I’ve been laying low. If you are waiting for a reply from me, please don’t take it personally, I’m just very, very slow at replying right now.

Sydney

I’ve recently spent a week in Sydney for our company’s annual team get together, Hi-Con. For many of us who are used to crawling into and out of our WFH caves each day, a week of in-person time is a daunting prospect yet ultimately, it was hard to ignore the opportunities it created that I do not have when remote. A pint in the late arvo with a peer, ranting and debating prospective ideas for the product is just something you can’t recreate over Zoom, nor is that face you pull at a mate when your eyes lock across an open plan office. That being said, each visit confirms that if I end up in a future situation where I need to regularly visit an office, I have definitely messed up.

Traversing jagged peaks

A highlight of the week in the big smoke was meeting Joshua Crowley, an educator and designer who runs Jagged Peaks. I had asked him to run a three hour workshop for the team on Cursor and prototyping AI-first experiences and Multimodal apps. Like what I imagine is happening in many orgs, Hireup has declared a future filled with AI and as designers riding this wave of whatever it will be eventually called, we recognised our team would find value in:

establishing a common framework for us to help identify good (and less good) AI experiences
building a shared language for when we talk about AI and design
some help with understanding how low the barrier of entry actually is to explore emerging interaction paradigms

Josh brought a refreshing level of honesty, humility and deep curiosity, immediately made us all feel safe and led a workshop which we all loved. It was wild to watch Service Designers who had never opened an IDE in their life prompt-build a multimodal shopping list app from scratch. I can’t recommend Josh enough if you suspect your team might need a gentle nudge into a space that seems kind of scary from the outside looking in.

Mapping (…as a meditation?)

I’ve spent a bit of time pairing on a hybrid service blueprint/user journey type map thingo with a service designer at work. Making all the lines and boxes line up was a super soothing exercise, and it was a bit of load off to be able to finally visualise the complex thing we were mapping yet I couldn’t shake the words of the esteemed Vicky Houghton-Price:

Mapping slows us down from making things real

I reflect though that in times of uncertainty or ambiguity, sometimes just holding a map makes us feel better, regardless of how often we refer back to it.

Running for is fun

I’ve started running again, this time experimenting with the Couch to 5km process. I nearly got to 5km runs during COVID but this time I’m feeling hopeful! As a kid I loved running and wanted to be Robert de Castella when I grew up. At 44 I can still feel that same sense of freedom that I felt then once I settle into a good rhythm on the foot falcon. Will keep you posted on my progress.

Reading, watching and listening