Weeknotes 39: Back to normal

I had a nice time doing a full five day week, (if a little tired by the end). It was satisfying to get through the to do list and not over or underestimate what might be do-able.

It’s been a good couple of homey weeks getting settled in, finishing off with cooking for my dad on Sunday and eating a few home grown strawberries which I am trying to save from the slugs and bugs.

User research

Been planning ahead for some user research with frequent bookers. It’s good to be thinking about this with Olivia, and realising how much I still don’t know about how to go about this.

Observing a couple of sessions for the accessibility research was fascinating – the current site is so flawed, but it made me think about some gaps in some of the choices we made for the prototype too. So much to learn!

So far we have been interviewing neurodiverse users, so it will be interesting to see what the overlaps or differences are when we move onto other user groups.

Planning

We’re into the last month of the quarter AKA month -1 of Q2. I’m feeling in good shape on the look and feel work I want to focus on, and I’m excited to see this week how that might fit in with other people’s priorities. It does give me some nervousness about what I’ve achieved as we hit half way through the (calendar) year….

Impatience

I think I’m having a waterfall relapse. I need to keep reminding myself that just because we don’t have a timeline doesn’t mean we won’t get there. Years of being so deadline driven is hard to let go of it turns out. We have a great team so I need to trust that we are working towards the same thing and we will get there.

I think part of this impatient feeling is coming from watching users interact with the current site, and being reminded again and again of how bad things are. This is useful even though its uncomfortable. Might ask Olivia about taking some clips to make sure as many others can benefit from this reminder.

Watching/Reading/Listening

I seem to have been on a fairly boring rotation of 6Music, the Guardian, the American Office, Hacks this week, not much to report

🔗 Some basics on Google’s user centred AI

🔗 Why we need criticism

🔗 Couldn’t tear myself away from this article about silicon valley pronatalists

🍰 Those of you who like a recipe, this is the easiest cake ever, I added a little crumbley topping as I didn’t have flaked almonds

Weeknotes 38

I’ve had a short couple of weeks with a long weekend in Paris. Its nice to be looking at a more normal week now, with some things to be excited about – observing user research being the number 1.

Here’s a few things from the last couple of weeks…

Good stuff

Really useful BFI Player meeting outlining next steps for investigating rename / rebrand. It was great to have well summarised notes of the SWOT we had been doing, and collaborate on where the gaps are and how we might look into them. Very happy to get to be involved in where this goes.

Piloting accessibility research Olivia and Katie Sawyer and the recruitment for this, really exciting that this is moving along with more this week.

Eating my way round Paris.

Harder stuff

Getting a handle on what to do with look and feel consistency. I need to work out how to start on What’s on while keeping in mind other sites, basically how we can be moving towards the consistency we would like without doing

Moving forward the agencies Player designs is grating at times, feel like I’m defending decisions I didn’t make sometimes. Just need to find the balance of being flexible with them so we come to something that works well, without redoing lots of work we paid for.

Just staying concentrating with a long weekend off has been hard.

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

🖼️ Loved Ellsworth Kelly at the Louis Vuitton Foundation. The small selection of his photography really made the abstraction come to life for George.

📺 Hacks season 1 – just fun and easy telly

🎥 North by Northwest, might be the start of a bit of a Hitchcock deepdive, not sure this one is supposed to have as much comedy as we found in it

🔗 Sites using Helvetica Neue

📚 The Dutch House by Ann Patchett was a wonderful look at how we view the past and family dynmaics

👂 Search Engine eps on Google’s introduction of AI… one doomladen, one very silly

📺 Loving Ncuti Gatwa as the new Doctor

Weeknotes 37
20 May 2024: Big and small

A week with a little more breathing space was great. Spent the time doing some planning, making progress across BoF work and booking screens as well as Player. Nice mix of things at the moment.

Nice things after work, Love Lies Bleeding with great legroom in the new NFT3, and a swim at Oasis. This weekend I had a lovely meet up with a favourite friend at Peckham 24.

Planning mode – thinking big

Spent some of the clearer headspace thinking about the look and feel work, which has been great to have the space for. Really useful chatting to Olivia about which users we might want to test some work with. So good to think about this early.

There may need to be two interconnected areas of work, for look and feel and navigation. Lots to think about in terms of how these fit together, how we involve users in both and who to involve at the BFI.

Looking forward to more discussions this week to get this work planned out.

Details mode – thinking small

Getting the typography right for the new Player designs has taken up lots of time. Trying to get things systematic from what the agency handed over will hopefully help us down the line.

It’s quite a switch to move between forward thinking and into the details, but I like working both sides of the brain.

Watching/Reading/Listening

🎥 Loved Love Lies Bleeding

📺 New Bridgerton was lots of fun as expected

📺 Most of Slow Horses S3

🔗 Testing Visual Design from Norman Neilson

🎥 Finally got round to The Holdovers, which was very moving

🔗 Heard Alexander Coggin speak about his work at Peckham 24

Weeknotes 36
13 May 2024: Crammed

Just a quick one, as I had a three day week and another three day weekend, this time in Leeds seeing old friends.

Those three work days were lots of: tying bits up with Margo leaving (and trying not to be too sad!), meetings, thinking and planning further look and feel work, meetings. It all felt a little rushed, but with five days this week I can get back on top of things.

Those three weekend days were lots of: eating and art!

Playbooks and documentation

A few things this week made me think about the need for more clarity on how we are running things. These include the changeovers as people may need to cover other roles, return to work, but also just working together within our team in different ways.

Jem has made a great start on putting our ways of working into Loop, which will be super valuable when we have more time to build it out a bit more. Need to think more about what is needed for those outside our team, and what is needed within our own team.

Watching/Reading/Listening

📚 Slamming through Pachinko thanks to the train rides to Leeds, likely to finish tonight (suprised I am enjoying more as book than TV, with more detail and chronological order)

📺 Finished Interior Design Masters a few weeks late

🖼️ Unravel at Barbican, interesting and historic but nothing I truly loved

🖼️ A Year in Normandie by David Hockney, and a great letterpress project by People Powered Press at Salt’s Mill, Saltaire

Weeknotes 35
7 May 2024: Gearing up

A little of last week was staring peacefully into space, but mostly it was busy in a good way.

I finished Friday by presenting as part of Oliver’s KLC show and tell, which was satisfying to go through a prototype with more people. I also ran a workshop, took part in our team day, spent lots of good time with good colleagues in the office, collaborated on smaller pieces like the booking path tweaks.

After all the work things, I had a busy bank holiday weekend with a gig, an exhibition, and seeing lots of friends and family. The best kind of weekend.

Look and feel workshop

I ran my long awaited (maybe just for me!) look and feel workshop. The response was positive, decisive and I’ve spent the rest of the week digesting it. Looking forward to continuing those conversations next week and thinking about what to do next.

My first instinct was grand plans… I’ve already started to break those down, and think about what we would really need to know to move forward without going on assumptions and hunches. Interested to talk more with Olivia about how we can interview users about questions that are a little more subjective.

There will be parts we can do as simple fixes, and parts that may take a long time. I think I will need to be ok with some uncertainty, but its good to have some sense of a possible direction of travel. It will also bring us back to the design system thinking, and probably make that piece of the puzzle more important.

Discussion day

It was lovely to come together with the team to have a check in on roadmaps and think about some of our ways of working. This felt less decisive than the workshop above, but, common themes came up, and I hope they can be pushed forwards.

We also visited the Tom Hanks: Moonwalkers exhibit. It was a beautiful space and some of the footage was stunning, the tone was far too American for me, but that’s ok, was happy we went.

Why I write weeknotes

We had some discussions about weeknotes – why some people are doing them, why they are personal. It made me articulate why I do them.

I like writing this to put my week together and think about common threads in my work. This was especially useful when I was new, I didn’t honesty feel productive, and I was working out what this job is. I still am and its still useful. I also thought they would be useful to refer back to, but that bit probably isn’t the case.

I don’t particularly mind whether people read them or not, this is more for me. But I am nosy and I like reading other peoples.

We discussed that as a team we mostly have personal weeknotes without team weeknotes. This does mean the chats that come off the back of them are with a handful of people, and they are tend to be about the personal not the professional. In our hybrid environment I think this is nice, but on the scale within our team of how much socialising is part of work, I realise that I am on the higher end.

As a result, I wondered if we would find use from doing UX team ones on perhaps a monthly basis – this might allow us and our team to get visibility on the mix of things we’re dealing with, both projects, and understanding of UX. Something to chat about.

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

🎭 Watched Machinal at the Old Vic, and had a lot of issues with it, but interesting all the same

🔗 Eagerly awaiting AG Cook’s new release after reading this article

🔗 Lovely article about public spaces in London, ft our own Mediatheque

🔗 A couple of great pieces from Vittles: firstly about perennial fave Silk Road in Camberwell, and then the holy grail for Stephen Street gang – 99 central restaurants for lunchbreaks so you never have to get a Pret again – map link

🔗Gardens, gardening

👂 Relistened to this ep of This American Life with a group who are convinced they’ll win the lottery, I often think about this story

📺 Rewatched some 30 Rock

🎶 Experimental folk from John Francis Flynn at Moth Club

🖼️ When Forms Come Alive at Hayward Gallery was a joyful time with my little nephew

📺 And so was watching Wallace and Gromit in the Mediatheque afterwards

Weeknotes 34
26 April 2024: Groundwork

We had a good monthly check in yesterday, it feels like this month we have got things in place for lots of work through the quarter and beyond. Also got my accessibility blog post up and have had a supportive response which I’m grateful for.

Outside of work, I had the best time with friends in Frome last weekend, and have got back on my sewing game (Me Made May is just around the corner, we may have more of a sewing theme for the next few weeks).

Experiments

Exciting to see the API work the developers have done which will allow us to do much more with Audience view. Great that change of pace for the sprints has brought such good results. Looking forward to getting involved in what we do with this next…. Data model here we come.

Workshop preparations

I’m looking forward to the look and feel workshop I’ve got planned next week. I think I’ve prepared as much I can, so now I just want to get in the room with everyone. This should give us a moment to zoom out in a way that we don’t often do in our team, interesting to see how that feels for the marketing team too.

When I was discussing with Jem, he reflected that we’re both doing lots of foundational work with other teams. Feels like its taken us both this first year of working here to even understand what kinds of this work need doing. I think it would have shocked me to hear that this time last year, but its good to be doing it now we have a better understanding of what’s needed. (I wonder if I’ll keep having moments like this as things go on…).

It’s been great to get support from Jem, Olivia, Katy and Darren this week to help me feel prepared for this.

Presenting

Found time to help Oliver with some visuals to explain the next steps for Replay and Britain on Film. I like being this kind of resource to our team – I think communicating to the rest of the BFI is a big part of my job, as well as communicating to our audiences. Anything that makes things clearer will help us with getting teams on board, and contribute to how they feel about working with us (almost like design is important

Watching/Reading/Listening

🎶Enjoyed seeing Eda Diaz at Servant Jazz Quarters, nice to discover a new venue

🎥Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes was as sweet as I hoped after everyone’s recommendations, and reminded me of a sweet Japanese time travel book

📺Started Baby Reindeer, it made me pretty uncomfortable (although not as much as seeing Monkey See, Monkey Do live), I can see why people are glued to it

🎶Great distraction via Chris Unitt’s newsletter has sent us down a thread of great music in movies. I’ve made our team suggestions into a playlist, but a great Friday moodboost watching Mads Mikkelsen dancing in ANOTHER ROUND and Romy and Michele dancing

🔗Checking out the latest from Figma’s variables

🔗A great summary of deceptive design patterns via Jem, and language around these via Josh

📚More hobby time, was recommended fantastic book The Edible Garden

Weeknotes 33
19 April 2024

Last weekend was lots of fun, the spring mood continued with a nice time drinking in the street at a private view with friends and then some birthdays and a night out on Saturday. The week feels like its sped by a bit with some nice office days and here we are with another fun weekend ahead.

Alongside continuing stuff for Player I’ve mainly been thinking about….

Content

Jem ran a great session for our team on content design. This was really useful and excited for him to start rolling these out for more people. It’s interesting to think about how we can more formally start embedding UX practices throughout the rest of the organisation. It does feel daunting with the scale of the task and how it can balance with the rest of our workloads.

There was lots of overlap for the piece I’ve been writing about accessibility. Just need to get that over the line, but have had some positive feedback so hoping I can get it finished up next week.

Stop/Start

I don’t think I’m very good at pausing and picking things back up. Some planning for look and feel felt really good and under control a few weeks ago. Now I’ve had a break and come back to it I’m just not as excited or confident about it. Hoping talking it over next week before workshopping the week after will help… But it does make me think that I need to find ways to stop procrastination getting in the way when work does need to be paused. Being realistic this will happen from time to time and I need to cope with it better.

Watching/Reading/Listening

🔗Plain English - its sad that this website is so sad looking when the content is great

🔗GOV.UK guidance on inclusive language for writing about disability

🔗Helping to get my head back into branding with a Koto piece on consistency

🎶Addictive listening

📺Started watching Monk thanks to Jem

📚Finished Demon Copperhead which I loved

Weeknotes 32
12 April 2024: Spring-ing

This week has been good, and its feeling like a lovely spring day today – my tulips are in bloom which is pretty joyful. Have felt productive, and had a nice team trip to the pub, so all good all round really.

Positive steps

Felix and Joe were able to release our first update to the booking journey. A lovely step forward, and I have designed tweaks to the next couple of screens. Onwards and upwards.

Player continues

Have a feeling this item will be on here for many months, but its all positive. I’ve been enjoying picking up the Player designs and collaborating with dev team, Margo and Paul on this. The feedback is clear and they are good at making decisions. Some things can spiral out a little with the amount of options, it’s a big task, but Margo is good at keeping us on track. Can’t believe we only have one more month of her insight on it 😭

Roadmaps

It’s been interesting to see roadmaps from the team, some bits still feel abstract, but overall it’s helpful. Will also be interesting so see how we use them, update them, change them. Makes me feel positive about the year ahead.

Watching/Reading/Listening

🔗Maps and accessibility – for Britain on Film stuff

📺Scoop on Netflix was a good watch – surprised me that the Prince Andrew interview was 5 years ago, and will always enjoy Billie Piper in anything (I miss I Hate Suzie)

📺Interior Design Masters keeping me entertained

🎶Jamz Supernova’s Global sounds French Creole episode fascinating and full of bangers

🎶Drifting along with Julia Holter’s new album

📺Finished our Gilmore Girls rewatch by eating a pile of junk food 

Weeknotes 31
5 April 2024: Bank hols

Here’s a double weeknote from two short weeks around easter break. As Jem mentioned I think, this is almost like a trial for a four day week and it feels great. I have been productive and am ending the week energised.

Last week had a really nice time at the donut in IMAX. Felt really proud to work at the BFI and it reminded me that when we’d walked into Dune 2 a guy in front of me had been visibly totally wow’d by the size of the screen. It really is cool to watch stuff there.

Over the long weekend we were mainly back to the DIY, but having the 4 days meant that felt (mostly) productive and not overly strenuous. Hoping to finish up some last bits of that this weekend. Got to see family as well, including meeting the newest (2 week old) addition, just gorgeous. Also some good eating – made this incredible mushroom lasagne, although unfortunately couldn’t find any tallegio, it was still delicious. Tried a new Malaysian place in Peckham, which was both delicious and friendly.

This week have been a little bit house bound, but enjoyed a trip to Rich Mix, above, to watch Late Night with the Devil. A little reminder how fun brand projects can be, I worked on a joint rebrand and web project for them back in 2018, and continued working with them on bits like the signage above till I left my previous role in 2022. Lots of fun, although lots of choices on the website probably don’t hold up, should probably prepare myself that someone out there may be redesigning my mistakes now. So here I am looking a little awkward that George is taking a pic of me with old work.

Late Night With the Devil also spawned a great chat about which type of horror it would be best to be in – I still reckon a classic murderer would be easier to survive than anything supernatural, but a vampire would be more fun.

Player handover

We’ve had the design files through from the agency. My design system nerdiness is coming out looking through how they’ve set up their Figma files, considering what I want to rearrange so I have an easy library to work with. Generally they have handed over a good, complete package.

There are lots of questions now for how bits will roll out which were out of scope. Little bit of nervousness that it’s now on me instead of them to work out some knotty questions, but mainly excited to get stuck in to it, and test out decisions as we go.

Mixing it up

Feels like I have a nice mix of things going on, with Player being the bigger chunk of my time, but some nice bits to design to continue improving the booking journey with Joe, and some feedback from the user interviews Oliver did for our move of the Britain on Film work. I had a good day in the office on Wednesday catching up with both of them in person, which just makes things easier. I enjoying have a few bits to balance, I’m certainly more productive than having one endless big thing to work on. Going to organise myself a few mini deadlines for these.

Accessibility

Enjoying trying to write a summary for the intranet on why we need to think about accessibility, and what we mean by that and inclusivity. I think it’s good to try and define what we mean by terms we throw around all the time, so we can point others outside the team to it, but also for my own practice to make sure I can articulate the way we approach it.

Watching/Reading/Listening

🔗Enjoyed reading about what our creative studio’s been up to on the intranet

🔗Returning to Microsoft’s Inclusivity 101

🎥Got a second watch of Funghi: Web of life at the Imax donut which had a ‘stick a video on, it’s the last day of term’ vibe this time round

🔗Piece about Black authenticity, in relation to American Fiction, this helped articulate a little about why, although I enjoyed the movie, I was worried that I should have felt more uncomfortable with it

🎥Scorsese’s After Hours had a few uncomfortably dated moments but overall was an enjoyably wild ride through 80s New York

🎥Even more upsettingly dated, but more recent was This is 40, which we thought would be an easy watch after grafting on the stairs, a mistake

🎥Last Night With the Devil, was loads of fun, and satisfied George’s horror craving, so good being in a full cinema for the jumps

📚Gave up trying to read The Sea, The Sea, just too mannered a voice I guess putting me off? May have to give it another go as in a few months as I don’t like to abandon books, and others seem to love it

Weeknotes 30
22 March 2024: Looking ahead

Ending the week on a positive note.

I started today with some lovely feedback from the Future Film Festival team, which I didn’t particularly think I’d done much work towards. We also are working on a compromise to launch part of the new player work imminently. Even though its a compromise, it feels good to know some change is coming out soon. Feels productive and have had good feedback from various people.

More small wins too – a clear discussion on how we as a team can share more visibility in small ways, Joe picking up the favicons for the AV sites. I also felt really lucky to work at BFI during our T&DT meeting hearing about the IMAX 70mm projection and the restoration of a lost Billy Connolly doc.

For some added positivity here are the first blooms on Pandora, my cherry tree (pic from last week, but relevant to our favourite trees discussion).

Player designs

It is a new way of working for me to think about how to stage out the new design work instead of doing an all in one launch. It is a big compromise at the moment but there will be benefits. There’s lots more to think about for how this will work, but I’m happy to be involved in how we can make that work for users. Looking forward to getting into that with Margo and the developers.

Planning process

At the start of the week, looking ahead felt too broad, there are definitely some concerns there.

I am happy to be part of this though, and see things I’ve picked up in the last year being included in the planning. It’s good to be part of shaping the work ahead.

I still think there’s a gap between the high level objectives and what we’re planning month to month. It feels like there’s a piece missing between these - I’m hoping that will be filled by the roadmap work that’s being mentioned, but it feels like there’s a lot still to do for planning, working effectively as a team.

Service week

I’ve been to a couple of talks for the GDS service week, one very practical, one much more forward thinking.In the practical session I learnt about the Lean UX canvas, something I can definitely see using in my work.

I also joined a discussion about designers and AI. It was fascinating to hear the different uses people are finding across government digital service. And I was lucky to be in a breakout with someone who had done great experiments for prototyping. Great to think about how this could affect our jobs with proactivity.

A useful quote to think about:  I think that discussions of this technology become much clearer when we replace the term AI with the word ‘automation’ Emily M Bender

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

Great week for being out and about….

👗V&A’s Divas highlights were Janelle Monae’s trousers, and Tina Turners’s Bob Mackie dress

🖼️Serpentine Gallery’s Barbara Kruger show saw the culture eating itself

🖼️Also saw an AI art piece by Refik Anadol, which didn’t make me feel a lot, but I do want to learn more about how it was made

🎥Bottoms was loads of fun

🎥Dune 2 was fantastic in the IMAX

🎥A cute Flare moment for What a feeling

📰Pretentious-ness / cultural exclusion... maybe it’s just as pretentious to post

📰Pillowy bread

👂Lolly Adefope’s Fanmail podcast before I say goodbye to audible as I’m not using it enough

📚Finished Stoner by John Williams

Weeknotes 29
14 March 2024

A speedy one as its a short week, I’m finishing up this afternoon to have a little London holiday.

This week has been little bits for the ticketing pages and keeping the Player stuff going.

Also thought more and talked more about how to do some overarching work about look and feel and navigation between our products. It was good to share this with more people. I work best when I can bounce off other people, but the way things work here doesn’t always feel conducive to this. I’ve been on the other side of this too, felt frustrated, and now feel myself doing it. Weird. Need to think more about why this is, what we can do.

For Player we are about to do a brand workshop, good to be thinking about knotty problems, and see how these kinds of things work with other teams at BFI.

Consistency v coherence

I had a good chat with Darren about how we designers often say consistency, and people hear ‘everything should look exactly the same’. What we mean is ‘coherence’ which is much more difficult to achieve, but much better for our users. We want products that feel in the same family, but can be flexible to the service we are trying to provide.

Watching/Reading/Listening

🔗Lots via Neil, that I will want to refer back to…Products v services and principles for service design

🔗Stakeholders or ‘opinion havers’

🔗Got annoyed reading this piece on ‘rules of UI’ and then realised it was useful for something

📰Vittles coverage of Deliveroo strike

🎶Ghetts

📺🎶Loving the return of Girls 5eva

📺Getting into Shogun

👂Amy Poeler’s Say More is giving me the giggles

Weeknotes 28
8 March 2024

This week has had lots of bits and bobs, not immensely satisfying, but we can’t have everything… Thursday was super social which felt good. Catching up with colleagues from similar organisations during work, and then catching up with old colleagues turned friends in the evening. More friends to see over the weekend, which is looking good.

Guess I have to shout out international women’s day? I don’t really know what it means anymore, except that I was given a chocolate on the way out of the swimming pool…

Catching up and collaborating

We had teams from Barbican, Wellcome Trust and Royal Academy visit us at Stephen St yesterday. This was organised by Olivia and felt really worth while. There are differing team sizes and structures across these organisations, mostly not huge teams, so its really nice to get together with other UXers.

Everyone’s at different stages of digital maturity and ux understanding in their organisations. Job titles and team size might make it look different but everyone has challenges with uptake in the different places. All reassuring that we’re dealing with the same stuff, basically.

It did make me grateful for the freedom and support we (Jem, Olivia and me) have had to establish our ways of working. And it’s really positive to be able to make a group like this for more support, I hope its something we can keep going semi-regularly.

More on user research

I observed a session this morning run by our external agency working on the new player designs. It was a different approach to the user research I’ve seen Olivia do, which made me realise how great it was in the sprint that we planned the research while planning the prototype.

The way we’ve run this project has meant there were just static pages to go through. As a result the way the participant interacted wasn’t very realistic or natural. We could get much less from observing them and getting them to think out loud, and it was more of an interview for feedback.

More ‘say’ and less ‘do’ which I have learnt from Olivia should be handled differently in terms of how you take it on board. Again, lucky to be able to learn about this stuff and reflect on it with Olivia. And there was still good nuggets that we can take through into the project

V&A inspiration

I had been going to pop the Chanel exhibition I saw this week just at the bottom of this note but have had a little play round on the V&A site so wanted to put a bit more about it.

In terms of the exhibition itself, I loved the earlier dresses and the intricate constructions. I thought I wouldn’t be bothered about the famous suits but the amount of them and the way they were presented was stunning.

I was reminded I had previously read about V&As collection search project and had a play with it to look at some pieces, its really impressive. As a user something I’d like to see would be more linking from the collection onto the exhibition page, they have images for what you can see in there, but to delve further I’d like to jump into the collection from there.

I also realised I’d missed the breadth of content they’ve created before going. I had been sent this nerdy sewing detail video before, but found this article really good intro, kind of similar to our ‘where to begin with…’. I wonder how we can make sure these don’t get missed.

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

👗 Chanel, as above

📺 Also tried to start Apple Tv’s The New Look but not sure I’ll stick with it, a shame because I thought I could watch it separately when George watches Masters of the Air… don’t know if these were brought out together for that reason?!

🔗This mad piece by Jakob Neilson about accessibility being solved by generative AI for UI, and two great rebuffs of it from Brian DeConinck and Per Axbom (many more have also come for him…)

🔗Not all the way through this, but posting here to come back to the Tech for Justice report

🔗Useful summary about audience modelling and how they can be used for creating digital cultural content

🎶 Enjoying new find Eda Diaz

Weeknotes 27
1 March 2024: Good question…

This week started with a burst, meeting the BFI’s new chair Jay Hunt who had lots of thoughtful questions for Neil, Cat and Paul. She was super supportive, friendly and it was not the intimidating meeting I expected. A good start to the week.

I previewed the new Player designs and had a good reaction from her and Ben which was validating. Spent a fair amount of this week understanding feedback from various angles on these, will be good to have Margo back next week. Also need to clear up some process stuff on how much we can get out of the agency before handover and think about how much of my time I can give to this as we continue.

Have done two solid swims, some prep for spring gardening and having a flurry of sewing which I haven’t done much of for ages, all feels good.

User research

Olivia ran a session earlier this week on asking good questions in user research (and life!) which was brilliant. She kept us on our toes with examples of closed, leading questions for us to rephrase.

Some tips I liked were the ways of asking open questions so you don’t feel like you’re giving someone a grilling. These were ‘curious commands’ like ‘Tell me about’ or ‘I’d love to know more about’, and ‘storytelling prompts’ like ‘talk through the last time you….’ or ‘demonstrate how you would…

The idea of a funnel in sessions is also helpful, starting with broad questions and focusing down to more specific as it goes on. All of it felt really clear in the session but it will take so much practice to be able to remember these techniques and keep coming back to them in reality. Hope to have some opportunities to practice soon.

Getting started

Feeling some anxiety about starting some new work around navigation and brand. I’m working on this in bursts where sometimes I feel really clear on what I want to achieve and why it’s important, at other moments I’m not sure if I only care about it from a design place, which isn’t user focused. I understand less about user research in this space, how do we get feedback on the finesse and feel of a design in depth?

I think defining some questions to make this brief feel tighter might help, so this is a reminder to set myself some parameters next week. In a small win on this, I have taken Dan’s great work on the product register to create a visual of the products we look after, I have tried to do this in various forms since starting here, so really useful to have that in front of me.

Anti-racism in UX

Trying to think about ways to embed anti-racism into our working practices now my What If course has finished. I came across this checklist of questions and provocations for looking at on projects which seems like a really useful framework. Wonder if this would help us to check our work, but with all sorts of process stuff when would we include it?

Reading/Watching/Listening

📺Winter comfort tv continues

📺Big Boys season 2, isn’t as good as the last but I still like it

🎥Enjoyed Getting it back: The story of Cymande, although it could have dug in more, has given me plenty to listen to as well

🔗How to advocate for accessibility in design

🔗Some short tips on anti-racism in UX, from Olivia

👂Interesting thoughts on the weaponisation of trauma as I continue with Things Fell Apart

👂Techno-optimists or authoritarianism from The Atlantic Podcast

Weeknotes 26
23 February 2024: Reflecting

Things are a little slower for me since we’ve wrapped the sprint, but it’s a good moment to reflect. I’ve been at the BFI a year now, so I took a look at what I wrote in my first weeknotes. They were about pace, scale and how nice everyone is. I think really I was unsure of my own sense of purpose and its good to think about how things have gone since.

What went well

Lots of it has been celebrating small wins like the work we did for LFF being reused for Flare or being able to advise on changes and see them on production quickly.

Realising the value I can bring from a unique perspective. It’s taken me a while to realise that I can see things differently, having been surrounded by designers all the time I took for granted how I view things, but it really does add value to our team.

Building a team. Working with Jem and Olivia came together quickly but it really is great having colleagues who support me and that I can be honest with. We’ve put together how we want to work, both day to day and having the freedom to try new methods like the sprint has been really rewarding.

Learning about user research. Again, working with Olivia has been great. The recent face to face stuff we’ve done at Southbank has been validating

The OKR process. This was new to me and initially had a business-y feel that I couldn’t get excited about (Anything with Quarters seems immediately business and not human). But I think this has given us the direction we need and I’m interested to see how we go setting new ones for the next financial year, and how road maps can give more visibility.

What didn’t

The BFI felt really opaque to me for a long time, I’m trying not to forget this so I can be generous with new colleagues, and also feed into continuing the What If anti-racism work. I have to accept that I am now part of this culture so changing rather than complaining is important.

It’s taken a while to get a feel for where decisions get made, I don’t think this will ever be clear cut but I’ve got a better understanding that I did.

Being a solo team can mean I lack collaboration, this is something that I really enjoy when I can do it, and Jem and Olivia are really supportive as other solo teams.

Moving forward

Knowing which bits I enjoy – collaboration, problem solving – means I can take opportunities to do these as much as possible or push people to work in new ways

Now that I’ve had this period of learning, I want to think bigger and bolder and be more confident about speaking up.

A couple of things I’ve read recently have helped me think about the culture here - this one about the purpose of design in product orgs. We’re not a product org but I think this applicable to our digital team at BFI. I recently read this article which looks at role of design, accountability and interactions with product and tech disciplines.

There are some key questions I’d like to come back to for our team…

• What is design for [in my organisation]?
• What is good design?
• How can we measure it?
• What does that mean for the way we organise and incentivise design in our business?

This piece about decision making through advice process also feels really relevant. I have found it confusing how decisions get made but is useful to think about in this way - giving some structure to a flatter hierarchy, goes beyond just saying ‘people can take initiative when they want’.

And finally, keep up the discipline – learning to work without deadlines has meant pomodoros and to do lists and I think I am getting better at it.

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

🎵A lot of fun with Jeff Rozenstock playing at Electric Ballroom

🎥All of Us Strangers was unsettling, beautiful, thought provoking

🎥Decision to Leave was confusing, pacy and exciting

🖼️ Women in Revolt! At Tate Britain

🔗 Trying to stay up to date on AI and UX

Weeknotes 25
13 February 2024: Quicknote

This is a bit of an off weeknote but wanted to fill in the gap from last week

Things haven’t had as much momentum since the sprint, but its positive to talk to people about it, and also to pick smaller bits up.

I have been enjoying homey things – planning the garden for spring and baking quite a bit – it is pancake day. But also had a fun weekend in the pub and tons of movies in real life.

Presenting

It’s interesting thinking about how to present in this new role. Perhaps its even to do with working more collaboratively. I was in the rhythm of creating lots of presentations in my previous role, but these would be around walking through design options

It’s a reminder to bring back those skills, which were simply making every decision really clear

I think it’s just a habit thing where I haven’t been doing it as much

Watching/Reading/Listening

🎥Big cinema time for the oscar selection… Poor Things, Zone of Interest and American Fiction… seems like a really good year these were all great, and confronting for different reasons

🎥More offbeat, I also enjoyed a Saturday morning at Funghi Web of Life, my first experience of 3D in the IMAX which I loved.

🎥Also had a fairly enjoyable time talking over Saltburn at home with some wine

📚Finished Maggie O'Farrell's The Marriage Portrait, which was enjoyable but not a favourite of hers

Weeknotes 24
2 February 2024: Sprint! Sprint! Sprint!

This is really last weeks news, but we ran the design sprint and it was great. Brilliant to spend concentrated time with colleagues, and get user feedback so quickly.

This week has been a bit more about catching up as well as reflecting on the sprint. I was also a little distracted by a talk I had volunteered for at Bucks Uni. Of course it went better than I’d hoped, and it’s actually really satisfying to have a deck that links career pre BFI with what I’m doing now.

Sprint: What went well

I think the biggest surprise was how effective the decision making methods were. I was most nervous about keeping things moving on time and everyone feeling exhausted at the end of the days… but I left most days energised and I think (hope?) others did too.

The ideas from the whole team were also fantastic, we have a rich source to draw from as we refine and refine. I wondered if people would feel nervous about drawing, but everyone was great at getting their ideas across.

Having the collaboration from our own multidisciplinary team really helped and I think will improve the team’s communication. Also being able to hear from wider BFI team was valuable, will have to keep them involved in the future.

The observation part of the testing really focuses you on how confusing interfaces can be, perfect having this so soon after doing the design (although I do think I could have fixed more with more than one day of design). We also had a great turn out for the ‘guerilla’ testing we did in the Southbank foyer this week, which is really encouraging for doing testing without having as much planning.

It’s been a really rewarding way to start the work year.

Sprint: What didn’t

The only day with tricky timing was the prototype day, if we run this again with only one designer, I think that would be the main thing to tweak to give some breathing room.

We had quite a few technical difficulties with the remote user testing, so more to mitigate that in future would also be important. Sometimes the prototype’s limitations also got in our way, but we still got lots of valuable feedback.

There were also assumptions in there that I think we could have avoided, the thing that came up again and again was the language for ‘seasons’ – really reminded me how internally minded I have become, as this is something I would have picked up on previous projects.

Other bits

Talking to students was really enjoyable, both in reflecting on things to get the deck together, hearing their questions and catching up with my old coursemate Jon about how design education is.

Seeing the work progress for BFI Player is also really exciting (and coincidentally involves another old coursemate, go Bath Spa!). Although it has brought up some brand conversations which could get tricky… more to think about on this one for sure.

Watching/Reading/Listening

🎵Enjoying Jeff Rosenstock 

👂A great episode of a favourite podcast, Rivka Galchen reads “The Bees, Part 1,” by Aleksandar Hemon,

👂Jon Ronsons Things Fell Apart series 2

🎥Made my way through Killers of The Flower Moon in two sittings

🎥But loved Anatomy of a Fall much, much more (I have never been so up to date on the Oscar nominated movies), and a good deal on BFI Player

🎥Back in the cinema for The Boy and The Heron

🎭Gecko’s Kin at National Theatre had some visual moments which will stay with me I think

💃And got out for a little dance at a Burns/Byrne’s Talking heads night

Weeknotes 23
19 January 2024: Back at it

I guess these could also be Jan-notes pretty much.

It was good to be off, but it’s also good to be back.

Headlines are, unsurprisingly, Mexico was fantastic, felt so lucky to have a proper chunk of time off, and really explore a new place. We stopped in Mexico City, Oaxaca City, Mazunte and Puerto Escondido. Got a great mix of history, art, food, mescal, whales(!), and just lying on the beach. Will be comparing every holiday to this, forever.

Feeling really good about 2024, have the energy for new things at work, finishing off the house and being able to enjoy my weekends. Focusing on friends and getting out to see art and theatre over constant DIY is going to make me cherish it.

Really excited for the design sprint next week, lucky to have such a clear plan for starting work. Daunting as to whether the technique will work but we will learn loads whatever happens.

It’s also been great to have the opportunity to be involved in the festivals away day this week. Met loads of people and good to hear the conversations!

Holiday reading

📚👂Tom Lake by Ann Patchet was my audio book for the long planes, read by Meryl Streep and it was great, will be returning to Ann Patchet for sure

📚The Book of Form and Emptiness kept me going on the beach, a good read for library lovers

📚Sudden Death was my Mexico choice, not quite what I thought but a fun take on some of the history… The Rest is History Mexico episodes were probably more useful for this

🎵Revisiting Swing Lo Magellan on mountain journeys took me back to past road trips

For holiday culture the highlights were the archaeological museum in Mexico city, Teotihuacan, Frida’s house, the hupils at the Oaxacan textile museum, this art library and print room and visiting a weaving workshop in Teotitlan de Valle

Weeknotes 22
19 December 2023: Dec-notes

Have been a little out of the habit with these this month – surprise, surprise December has been busy, but fun.

Just keeping going with the last bits before Christmas, feels nice to have a quiet-ish week to tie off loose ends before I will be off for three (!!) weeks. Feel very lucky to be able to extend the holiday season and get some sun in Mexico.

Have done some of my favourite Christmas things, heading to the Dog and Bell, cooking a whole load of fish with friends, and it’s nice working in central London for some pretty moments with the lights. And most importantly we had our kitchen/living room ready for hosting.

Wrapping up and looking ahead

Lots of this week is about making sure I’m ready for next year. The design sprint for What’s on will be coming up quickly when we get back, which is exciting, but just trying to make sure all the reading and preparation I’ve done makes sense when we get back. Lots of prep with colleagues is helping with this and I’m happy to have support with this idea. It will be a great way to kick of 2024.

Christmas Party

My first BFI party was a lot of fun, good to realise how many people I do know outside our team, how lovely everyone is. I’ve never had such a big workplace before and I am very on board that big workplace means big party.

KLC mapping workshop

This was a one day workshop to think about how things might progress in the shorter term and how they might fit together in a more ambitious, longer term plan.

It went really well, although it was exhausting. It was good to do this in preparation for What’s on as we used the model of day one of the sprint. It gave me confidence that the timeboxes really can work (although we had far less people in the room). And it was great to hear ideas from our colleagues in the KLC team about what works well and what their more ambitious goals would be. More to be excited about for 2024 is working in this area more.

Watching/Reading/Listening

Red shoes – beautiful and mad, it was worth seeing on a big screen. And enjoyed seeing the drawings and costumes in the exhibition at Southbank

Ariyetti – very sweet Studio Ghibli version of the Borrowers, planning to watch a few more Ghibli before The Boy and the Heron in Jan

Die Hard – had never seen so can finally agree with people it is a Christmas movie

Umbrellas of Cherbourg – even more beautiful and mad than Red Shoes, I enjoyed this so much more than I expected, and loved the ending shot, which reminded me of Ed Ruscha crossed with Edward Hopa

Robin Robin – very sweet story and gorgeous animation

Finished the incredible I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel – so unusual and so brilliant

And started the incredible The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy – which I had been saving since reading Things I Don’t Want to Know as I didn’t want to speed through this series too quickly

UX dark patterns – interesting to see India legislating against some of these

Weeknotes 21
1 December 2023: Blue sky

We’ve rolled into December with a crisp winter day. It was Spotify Wrapped day yesterday and advent calendar today so we’ll be into end of year lists galore soon and party season… I’m ready to roll on Mexico holiday. Feels like a sudden change from that autumny feeling.

The novelty has worn of Spotify wrapped a bit over the years (and didn’t love the styling much) but as a former Last.fm obsessive I still can’t resist the rankings and my end of year playlist.

Workwise it’s been good to do lots more chatting and in person meetings, including a lovely chat with Mina Mikhail who set up (from the goodness of his own heart) a brilliant festival exploration product: TIFFR. Have also been having some good conversations about how to collaborate on shaping ideas.

Another inspirational meeting has been hearing Prashanth talking about QA which has been long mysterious to me. It’s also feeling a nice end to the week as some production changes and dev changes are all coming to fruition due to brilliant colleagues work.

Early, earlier, earliest?

How can we help break down problems to shape work together? At what point should people be bringing work to UX? There are still lots of questions about how we work together as a team, and collaborate on processes. Which all needs balancing with doing the actual work. Maybe we should also be thinking more about how to feel like a team.

Off the back of the sprint process planning, we’ve been thinking about how we can use parts of that in lighter ways. I think the more we (in UX) can get involved in understanding the different products, and I guess the BFI more widely, the more valuable I think we can be.

It’s a challenge of course to get involved in everything at the start, but if we can do some good design of workshops that we can reuse again and again that will be time well spent and can be a way to gather information efficiently.

We are in another phase of planning processes for Q4, which I think is feeling a drain on some people’s time. But I find it so valuable to have this set of standards for all the areas of work, and enjoy hearing what others are doing in a monthly check ins.

Festivals

Getting ahead into next year, looking at what improvements we can do for the Future Film Festival and Flare. I do like having quicker bits and pieces to play off the bigger stuff. But always have to look for balance as I can be guilty of prioritising what’s in front of me so that I feel useful and productive in the moment.

Watching/Reading/Listening

May December – maybe the best performances I’ve seen this year, left with a very unsettling feeling

The Mongol Khan – a totally mad live show seen on an off chance, which was worth it for the production value and scale, but very dodgy on plot

Such Brave Girls – hilarious and uncomfortable new BBC comedy

Search Engine – can’t stop thinking about this episode on how to stay sane using the internet, and the two parts on history of medical amphetamines/ADHD is also really fascinating

How do I know if it’s the right time to run a design sprint?

Queens united Bjork and Rosalia ❣️

And my 2023 top 100

Weeknotes 20
17 November 2023: A few more on What’s on

This week I’ve felt a little more sluggish than last, but things are getting done and things are moving for What’s on, which feels really good to put us in a good place for starting 2024. More on that below…

It’s also been a cultural feast, I saw the Marina Abramović show thanks to a lovely ex colleague who is doing a great job on their website, sparkling Jessie Ware (Thanks Jem for the tweet above), and the hilarious Fern Brady alongside some newer comics at Moth Club, which is always a fave.

The Marina Abramovic did surprise me, mainly because I wasn’t shocked by the talked about Imponderabilia piece, and got myself into a false sense of security. I then felt really quite angry at a piece towards the end, Luminosity. But maybe its not a bad thing to generate such a strong reaction. Have since listened to an interview with her and am wondering if it’s all just a cult… Happy to have seen such an insight into such a pioneer though.

Had a little reminder of how different my day to day feels here, by having a swift drink with old colleagues. They are doing great work though and it still suits them if not me any more.

Other people’s sites

In terms of research for What’s on, we had a brief discussion as to whether anyone else has ‘solved it’. I think there may be some who have done a really good job for their own audience but none feel perfect. This is both an opportunity and a challenge – on the positive we can learn from others mistakes and try to improve things, but it’s also a reminder that it’s not easy to solve. Need to try to remember this when I can maybe be overly confident about fixing the glaring errors on our current sites. And remember nothing ever will be perfect and if we’re being iterative, that’s ok.

There are great ideas we can look at, TIFF have done a really good job, but they don’t show their curation as well as (I think) we would like to. Although this is an area we need research on. It is worth keeping an eye on them as they do have one of the most similar models (big public film festival as well as year round new release and rep programming). Picturehouse have good navigation for the variety of venues. Barbican get across their venue experience and Southbank have got the furthest on the tricky balance of seasons.

It’s also a reminder to look outside our sector, as other types of product/service have got much further into great user experiences than the cinema sector – eg editorial sites for curation, and streaming services for what people are used to in the movie world.

Stakeholders

Had a lovely meeting at lunchtime to kick off the work with Jason Wood, good to have a presentation coming together from across our team, and looking forward to sharing this with more colleagues next week and hearing how they can feed in.

Balancing with other work

It’s fair to say What’s on has been dominating my time, I guess this is as much my interests as well as priorities coming from elsewhere. Trying to think about how best to keep other things going as well, and this will be more of a challenge into next year. There are really exciting areas to work on so need to make sure this is balanced. Had some interesting chats about archive work this week.

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

As mentioned above… Marina Abramovic, Jessie Ware and Fern Brady …strong women across the arts

Have also been loving the (surprising Mailchimp collab) Björk podcast and going back to Debut off the back of it

Good to understand how animations can be worked on in an accessible way

Bringing UCD into agile

Bunnyfoot talk on Information Architecture – some basics but a good refresher of principles

And a commercial yet customer insight mindset from Tate

Weeknotes 20
17 November 2023: Things I’m enjoying

It’s a sunny autumn day, so it’s easier to be positive.

There’s lots to enjoy so I’m going to focus on the good things, inside and outside work. I’ve noted some of the bigger, work related ones below, but nice to think about the little things too.

The floor laying is nearly done, the trees are looking autumnal, excited about planning the prototype sprint, lots of tickets are moving through with the developers, went to Peckhamplex, fitted in a swim, had some nice glasses of wine with a friend visiting from Munich and later I’m going to the Royal Academy for an exhibition.

Feels like a good balanced week (and hopefully it will still feel like this after another weekend on the renovations, I guess this post will serve as a reminder).

Agency interviews

Margo and I met with agencies who will be doing some work to improve the Player website. We had really impressive options, and it was great to sit on the other side of the table. I was a little jealous to see such honed processes, when we are starting from scratch with everything, and things can feel unstructured. Keeping my positive lens on, I think there’s so much I will be able to learn from the one we have appointed.

In person meetings

I’ve seen lots of colleagues this week, it makes such a big difference to how I feel about work and how motivated I am. It’s nice to feel more collaborative and that there a variety of

I also love how open my colleagues are to give new things a go. I guess the opposite to what I mentioned above (being jealous of the slick processes) is we get to be really adaptable and try things out. Normal to have some wobbles about how the best ways to do things I hop.

Flexibility

I’m on my way to meet Jem at Southbank, nice to be able to work in the venue sometimes as well as at home and Stephen St. I have also been able to flex my hours a little this week to fit in bits of the DIY, which is making a massive difference, just in small ways. I’m really lucky to be able to do this, and want to keep appreciating it.

Watching/Reading/Listening

Dream Scenario at Peckhamplex, enjoyable surrealism from A24, Nicholas Cage and Kristoffer Borgli (Sick of Myself)

Started I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel and I love it – kind of a nice link to Dream Scenario, very different angle on fame

Another one from White pube a brief history of arts school – great to think about how art schools as they are now in the UK came to be, I knew some of the more recent influences, and the political influences when I did my foundation and degree but it was great fitting it all together. Also links to this gem of archive film of the Hornsey occupation on BFI Player

Weekly summary email - another productivity tip that I may try
Small big tweaks from Gov.uk - homepage redesign 

Weeknotes 19
3 November 2023

I’ve had a good week, somehow managed to fend off a cold (hopefully not speaking too soon!) and battled the wind to get into town yesterday for lunch with Sophie, and a great gig in the evening. I enjoyed experiencing new venue HERE at the Outernet, which is in some ways a little slick for my liking.

It did make me think about how different things were from some of my very first gig experiences which took place across Tottenham Court Road at the Astoria. The Astoria shut (I believe to make way for crossrail) after I had been going there for only 2 or 3 years. I was distraught about this at the time in a way that feels quite hilarious against the many punters who would have had a much stronger connection with it over years. But I can still picture the sweaty crowds, a memorable glitter canon and remember how it felt to be in those crowds. Even in the few years I got to go there I managed to see LCD Soundsystem, Animal Collective, Battles, Patrick Wolf, Florence and the Machine and loads of others. It’s sad in the years since how many more music venues we have mourned, and the really difficult times they are facing now. So it does feel really positive to be able to go to a new venue (even though I didn’t love it), which takes advantage of new technology, I probably need to stop being such a millennial nostalgist.

Work wise it’s been good too. It feels like we’re in a good phase of planning and I’m feeling positive about what I’m learning from this role, and different ways I’m working. It’s good for me to focus on this, and hope I am bringing my experience to people in positive ways too.

User research

I’ve finished the week looking at a draft of Olivia’s and it’s great to see people’s genuine feedback on our site summarised. There’s lots for me to learn in terms of remembering not to make assumptions. She’s done a great job of pulling loads out from the participants we had.

UX methods

We’ve started a board to share methods and where they can sit through the phases of pieces of work. It’s been useful to confirm my own knowledge, learn from the rest of the team, and have a place to add to as we look into different techniques for various products. It’s building on the sprint research I was doing last week, which I have got into a good plan which I hope we can move forward with soon.

What If

A different type of learning, this is the anti-racist training the BFI is running in partnership with What If… These are phenomenally well run, and a good mix of theory and application to this organisation. The mix of learning formats is great, and it reminds me how good it is to be with people learning together. It is interesting because in applying it, its also a mix of learning about ourselves - what assumptions we hold and cultural systems we take for granted. So a lot to take in, but really valuable.

Watching/Reading/Listening

Had a great time yesterday seeing Flying Lotus at HERE - great music, great visuals although kind of a weird audience

Filled a key gap in my film knowledge… I watched ET for the first time

‘I thought about that a lot’ - an essay about belonging

White Pube on one of my favourites: Art on the Underground (can be read or podcast)

Finished reading Lessons in Chemistry which I thought was fine. Would love book recommendations for something amazing

Weeknotes 18
30 October 2023: Quick links

Just a quick one, as I missed Friday but wanted to do a quick note to keep the routine.

Last week felt like a good one for planning, and though I usually like to write these on a Friday, it’s quite nice to do this Monday morning and remind myself of how last week went.

Sprint research

We had a good meeting about how to define the work for What’s on. I think there is more complication than I might have been thinking about before, in terms of the expectations from teams around the organisation.

I’ve been thinking about how we can run a prototype sprint for What’s on, in a way that would hit several goals of our team (and myself)... involve other teams, get their feedback, work in the open, collaborate within our own team and push things forward more swiftly.

Based on some of IDEO advice, need to think about the central question. With such a short focused piece of work, we need to make sure we do have the focus we need for it to be effective. I think it’s about finding ways for users to take in the breadth of the programme and make a confident choice about what to watch.

Have been reading up on the big Sprint Book too, amazing how much is available on the site, will find time for the book also.

Networking

We had a great meet up with UX professionals at Wellcome Trust, organised by Olivia. One of their team talked us through an empathy mapping and content hierarchy workshop. Also finished the week with a chat with the Barbican’s developers.

We’re thinking we will reciprocate the visit from Wellcome in a few months, so need to think about how to make that productive, and perhaps other public sector/arts organisations we could invite (including Barbican).

Design Systems

Had a look at this great set of video resource on all things design systems, need to find some time to get cracking with this one. But the spacing stuff is progressing, which means some of the system thinking will be underlying the site, in a way which should speed things up.

This week

Some loose ends to get over the line - both the spacing tickets, and getting team input on the editorial stuff so we can get that built.

Back into WhatIf training tomorrow

Watching/Reading/Listening

Mixed bag…

Seven Moons of Mali Almeida and Love, Nina both on Spotify audio books which I got over excited about and have used the full month allowance.

Work efficiency

Learning about Powell & Pressburger

Portrait of Penge on Britain on Film

Ultra Processed Foods

We Own This City, follow up to The Wire from last year, and looking at the horrible true stories it’s based on

Weeknotes 17
20 October: Stretch

It’s more of a month notes situation again here, I don’t even want to write these now, but it’s worth giving it a go I think, and then getting back into the rhythm of it.

Overall – it’s been busy few weeks with family things, the house being taken apart and WhatIf feeling quite overwhelming. Mainly the lack of kitchen feeling overwhelming… But will be worth it in the end.

The momentum within the team has also felt quite up and down. At points it has felt like we will go into this quarter with much more clarity about what’s going on, but actually the momentum doesn’t feel like it’s there (possibly lots of other people feeling overwhelmed too).

It has been great to have the team together this week for a full day though. I think I need to give some patience to the processes that are new to everyone. Everyone is doing their best and I really believe we have a good team.

Also shout out to how much I love the IMAX, the concert films I’ve seen in the last month have been a true delight. And it’s been lovely to make a small difference to their work with a look at the navigation and homepage that we will get in place soon. Bring on Renaissance.

LFF

It’s been fun to see the BFI in full swing for this year’s festival, and had some positive feedback about our (small) contribution to it.

Things I saw, in a rough ranking…

How to Have Sex – my favourite of the festival, just perfectly balanced and sensitive

Maestro – which I really enjoyed the New York-y ness of it all, and the great performances, and pretty beautiful

Book of Solutions – good for laughs and made me want to watch older Michel Gondry films, he does have an original mind

Joint last ….Ferrari – the Surprise Film, which I was disappointed by, but I guess it was very festival-y one to start with

Pool Man – crap, thank god for Danny Devito

And I have a few to look out for as they come out of the next few months.

What’s on work

This has been really up and down – with a great workshop that felt like a big step forward but still no clear plan of how we will progress this being visible to me. It’s hard to know if this is something that is normal, and will work itself out, that feels difficult to me because I’m used to being in the know from the start of things… or if it’s actually a pace problem which will stop us being able to get to the point we want next year. Hard to say. The next few months will certainly be interesting, and I will see if the processes here are something that I can get used to.

What If

I have been really privileged to be part of these anti- racism workshops. The commitment of time from across the organisation is brilliant and the course is really well done. It is a little disheartening to see the level of issues across the organisation, which of course affect Black and global colleagues disproportionately, but also make this a tough place to work. See the White Supremacy Culture characteristics. I am trying to commit myself to this process and give it the attention it deserves.

Links

Design Pattern Histories

Sandra Bullock and the rise of tech

Purpose + goals + progress gives meaning to work

Working on Design leadership

Really clear User Research Principles

New V&A platform Mused

Writing documentation and how it informs what we make

NHS roadmapping

Watching/Listening/Reading

Taylor Swift: Eras Tour Film – so fun (could be shorter)

Tokyo Story – delightful to take the in-laws and see a beautiful piece of cinema history, while there were things that felt different from modern film it certainly didn’t feel outdated

Stop Making Sense – so fun (could be longer)

Past Lives – a real weepy when I needed it

Found my new fave author Claire Keegan, I read Foster and Small Things Like These back to back

Weeknotes 16
8 September: Processing processes

It’s a week with lots of questions….

What process do we need in order to change how we do things?

We’ve got lots of new things on the go, both as a wider team and for me to think about in design.

With a large group, how do we agree on how to go about things?

It’s pretty hot to be thinking about this, but there are a few areas that feel like they are filtering through everyone’s minds.

I have also booked tons of tickets for LFF so that’s nice to look forward to while I power through DIY this weekend. Other nice things have been escaping the mess of the house at my mums, a swim at the lido, another swim this morning, fresh plaster 🤩, speedy sweetcorn on the BBQ.

Collaboration

How do we get collaboration on a process itself, and when we carry it out?

Who do we involve, and when? …Without keeping everyone in meetings all the time.

How do we make people feel comfortable giving and receiving feedback?

Alignment

How do we know when we have enough of a consensus to move forward?

This comes back a little to some of the thoughts I’ve had on getting a better culture of feedback. People aren’t forthcoming about whether they disagree (maybe not wanting to seem critical) but it also means it isn’t clear when people do agree.

There’s also a diary curse of getting these kinds of things talked about.

Giving it a go

At what point do we try it out rather than talking about it?

How can we get enough done with the first iteration of a process?

How can we keep refining it for the next attempts?

I think I have the luxury for one part of my work, the design system, that this feels ok to do. This is a small group and I think they’ll give it a go and we can iterate on the workshop I’ve designed (or scrap it if that’s what people want). I feel excited about doing that next week.

The other big one on my mind, scoping out the What’s on, feels like it has more eyes on it, more pressure attached to it. At the moment I’m doing some preparation to allow us to do a workshop – it’s been good to talk this through with Olivia, but now she’s on leave and I have felt a bit uncertain. I’ve got it back on track and have a couple more weeks to work through how best to use people’s time and energy.

Links

This piece about Jakob’s Law (People spend more time on other sites) in relation to accessibility is a useful reminder not to be lazy.

On design processes and when designers don’t always have all the say

Problem reframing

User researchers as insight machines – great ideas in this one

Thanks to Oliver for a couple of these – great to have widely read colleagues

Watching/Reading/Listening

My fascination with and fear of Tradwife phenomenon is broken down well by Anne Helen Petersen

Great piece from Lou and others at the BFI on Working class masculinity on screen

Powered through a fairly good twisty murder mystery Two Nights In Lisbon

So glad Starstruck is back for a third series (although also powering through this one too quick)

❤️‍🔥It’s Sizzling hot

Next week

Having a go at some workshops mentioned above, both running and participating

Starting on the What If experiment zesting programme

Weeknotes 15
1 September: Launch

The LFF site is now live, which feels like the first proper big moment for my time in this role. It’s been lovely to have good feedback from around the team and marketing that my work in this role is making a difference to people. There will still be lots to do on LFF and I’m excited to be part of research and get much more information to work with for this in the future.

It was good to go for a drink to mark this, meet a few more people from around the teams. And it’s been fun to browse the programme to see what I can get to, there’s lots to see.

It’s been a short week, so really that’s been the main thing, but I do feel like other things are pushing forward which is nice. Maybe it’s a little of a back to school feeling, but there’s clear areas of work for the next few weeks.

Iterative

It does feel like we’ve made improvements to the LFF site, but they don’t go a huge way yet to making a big difference for users. Trying to keep a balance between celebrating small wins, taking the praise, but also not being complacent that there’s a huge amount more to do. This is going to be part of working in a more iterative way than I’m used to, thinking there is more to do instead of feeling like we’ve made achievements.

Improving communications in the teams

This was already on my mind last week, but there has been more discussion of clarity with developers this week. We are also thinking about how to get collaboration on our goals, and how to communicate development changes to the content team. Lots to think about in terms of workflows.

Rigour

I think I need a new year’s resolution for September to be a bit more methodical and rigorous. This is just a bit of a personal one, but it should help the smoothness with development (above), in order to test stuff in design to make less testing possible when we move into development.

Goals for next week to get Figma files ready for all page templates, and knock the spacing plan on the head.

Going to need to apply some rigour to my ‘second job’ as a builder, painter, decorator and keeping the house liveable in the madness too…

And applying it to my concentration, I’m finding pomodoro technique really good for working from home.

Reading/Watching/Listening

👂Good ep of Pod Save the UK about Andrew Tate

📚Animals by Emma Jane Unsworth – enjoyed the movie a while ago, and think it actually works better as a book for getting into the damage of someone pulled apart between intense romantic and platonic relationships

🎥Scrapper at Southbank – a sweet relationship, a little bit too much going on stylistically

🎵A couple of throwbacks for The National and Panda Bear

Next week

Design system coming back to the fore, accessibility stuff and planning some different workshops.

Weeknotes 14
25 August 2023: Patience

After six months I’m still feeling new, still feeling like things are shaping up and trying to be patient with all of this.

I think this week has been quite up and down, with momentum building for LFF, but perhaps not as smooth as we might like. It’s to be expected (I’ve heard this is always a tricky time for the team), but it still doesn’t feel great… I think I need to get better at dealing with uncertainty and not having clear processes. But also, we need to think about clearer processes, timings, transparency and asking the right questions at the beginning (which I’m sure I noted in here, months ago…).

Olivia suggested getting in place a retro on this – I think it would be interesting to do, but need to be careful about what kind of timing we can work for that.

Maybe I’m also affected by the renovation work I’m doing… I also need to be patient with this, big time. But I do feel more in control, I get to have the vision, and make the plans. I think knowing the direction we’re headed in makes the big difference.

Problem discovery

So this leads me onto how we start projects, we have been discussing the ideas people have in their heads, these may have been floating around for months, years, or may be new. They may be based on impressions we don’t know about). It’s been interesting to look into how we can create workshops. I think I need to think about all the information we need, to make sure we find a workshop that gets all of it (or find ways of getting it elsewhere.

I think particularly the size of the BFI means we need to think about who to involve, when. This will always be a challenge but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Assumed knowledge

I think the other challenge we’re up against a lot, is assumed knowledge. This is part of the same as the above - people assuming we are solving the same problem, but maybe one more of context. So I think I need more thought around, how do we get people onto a level starting point. I might refresh myself on how we ran workshops at Cog, these weren’t right for our purposes in lots of ways, but we did get a huge amount of knowledge, quickly, and that’s what I and others often need.

Spacing

This feels like a real slog, the challenge of working on someone else’s designs. In general that hasn’t been as much of a challenge as I thought it might be at the beginning, as while there are elements I wouldn’t necessarily agree with, there is clarity of what they intended, with lots of it. I think spacing is something that wasn’t well thought through, so trying to impose an improved system is a little tough.

Links

Captions v Subtitles

Problem framing workshops

Reading/Watching/Listening

L’immensita at Southbank – a beautiful performance from Penelope Cruz

The Effect at the National Theatre – pretty good, some interesting ideas

Sick of Myself on BFI Player – a dark comedy, brilliant portrayal of a toxic couple, and the lengths people go to for attention

Listening Adriano Celentano - Prisencolinensinainciusol

A forever fave - Cheated Hearts

Weeknotes 13
11 August 2023: Connect the dots

I had a great time at the IMAX seeing Oppenheimer, and went to Southbank too, so I’ve felt connected to things. A really fun way to mark six months of being here.

It feels like this week has been lots of productive meetings getting input on various things with people around the organisation. Lots of focus on LFF of course, but also thinking about Player and accessibility. It helps to keep a good balance, while having momentum towards the festival. I’m aware that I love a deadline, so I need to be careful not to focus so much on these things which feel urgent. I want to pick up design system work next week for this reason.

I think the subtitles for this week actually give a good sense of what I want to focus on for the next six months… being visible in my work (to help others across the organisation think with user focus) and connecting with the breadth of the organisation.

Visibility

Design wise it has been nice to get the thoughts I’ve had for the festival homepage more organised and out to people. I do feel some pressure to make sure the festival site has perceptible improvement, its the most high profile thing I’ve worked on. Looking forward to getting more feedback and input from colleagues next week.

I am also thinking about how to give visibility to UX (rather than solely UI), so following up with visual notes, flows or maps might be something I’d like to do more of when it’s relevant (also nice to do bits off the computer!).

I think Catherine and Harriet are good at sharing their work with wide teams, I wonder what kinds of work might be interesting to see shared in this way. We can’t spend all of our time in meetings, but I think this gives more visibility and allows more connections…

Connections

It’s great to connect with people for various scoping meetings and see people in the office. Great to work with the Player team on some homepage thoughts too.

With some of the scoping, it can be hard to know who to include, who has expertise, or on design work who should have input when, who is interested in what level of detail. I think this is going to come with time, that’s all we can do really, but I think this could be a little more formalised to save on multiple meetings. Something to ask more up front at the start of things perhaps.

A big challenge on this theme, is to know what work exists elsewhere /what related teams might be working on. There’s a lot of mention of ‘oh we have looked at that before’. There may be some things we need to go through a process ourselves to learn, but where work exists I hope we can find ways to share.

Can’t get the hopes too high, but maybe sharepoint can help with some of this.

The silo’d nature of big organisations is what I expected, but I think we can do more to learn from what others are doing, and make our work available to others.

Six months

It’s nice to feel some connection with the organisation as this week marks being here for six months. I think I have learnt a lot and started to feel settled. It’s clearly been a lot of change for the department in this time and that will continue

I hope the OKR work can make the next six months have some more meaningful outputs from my work, there are some areas which do need big change.

Looking at what I wrote in April after a month and a bit…. We are still in the process of looking at how to resolve some things like how to allocate resource, and find more structure and cohesion as a team. I had good chats with Katy this week about what we can do with the OKRs this week, so that feels like we can move in the right direction.

Watching/Reading/Listening

Oppenheimer at IMAX – I didn’t have my hopes too high for this, because while I’ve liked some Christopher Nolan films in the past, I don’t feel as strongly as the megafans, but I absolutely loved it and completely understood why seeing it in IMAX was so important to people. Can’t wait to see more there.

Kokomo City – this was also great, interesting to see another quite impressionistic documentary (after Name Me Lawand recently), this was even looser, without narrative, just letting four Black trans sex workers talk about their experiences. The tone dealt really well with the mix of stories from the funny and assertive to the more vulnerable and painful.

Listened to an interesting podcast to think about how to design design processes. I think being in a job that is totally new to the organisation means people don’t have too much expectation of how I will work which gives me freedom to try out new techniques. The miro board associated will be a useful reference (and article here, paywalled)

With recent discussions of accessibility I also read this piece about neurodivergence and sound levels, I didn’t know how synaesthesia and neurodiversity were related.

I also read something interesting (which I can’t now find) about the importance of referring back to notes to summarise, otherwise they aren’t much use… don’t know if that’s true of these, ha, but it is the longest I’ve sustained any kind of writing, so we shall see.

Next week

Balance some ongoing tasks (forms, editorial & accessibility) with LFF

Weeknotes 12
4 August 2023: Quick thoughts

Just a quick one with a few bits, this week has felt a bit slow to begin with, but we’re getting there.

And may have had some distractions with the planning of lots of DIY. My living room looking industrial chic with a stripped wall.

Late to make a note about Barbie, but it was absolutely delightful going to a full cinema, my (home sewn) outfit and matching (homemade) ice cream above.

Some milestones going on as it is my birthday tomorrow, and next week I will have been at BFI 6 months, I’ll try and write something more reflective next week and less speedy.

Accessibility

I started and ended the week doing various accessibility related things. It’s great to have time to focus on this.

The beginning of the week was quite granular – I went to a GDS workshop about some new WCAG guidelines for target sizes.

It was useful to see the different ways this can be solved, and remember most of the guidelines do have room to solve in different ways. At the moment I don’t think the switch to 2.2 guideline willI cause issues on our site for this particular item.

We’re also doing research around how to present access screenings and access information, so a different type of thing. For this I’ve been reminding myself how various old clients did it, and seeing some great stuff as well as some odd stuff. Shout outs to Leeds Playhouse for audio and BSL flyers, and HOME for relaxed performance video.

OKRs

It’s been good to come back to these in this week’s check in with Neil, its taking shape how we can break them down, I think. And good timing for me to think about how I can support these in my next 6 months here. It is good to have top level view, but potentially have concerns on how we match the ambition day to day…

Links

Target sizes in practice – Updating the gov.uk homepage

What’s new in WCAG 2.2

Watching/Reading/Listening

It really is high to low brow here this week: I read about the housing crisis from a personal point of view - All the houses I’ve ever lived in by Kieran Yates, which is fantastic way to look at the different issues affecting housing in the UK

…but my watching has been Harry Potter and Bridget Jones for some reason this week (read hangover)

I also went to Barbie since I last wrote one of these, it was fantastic, but is a little hard to take the ‘have your cake and eat it’ vibe of being somehow fun and not too deep, but also feminist, but also totally consumerist…

I also keep thinking about this article about types of thinking, and the idea of how different people think with inner monologues, visually, or neither

And read about the Amazon wildcat strikes

Next week

Six months! More accessibility! More LFF!

Weeknotes 11
21 July 2023: Good things come in threes

It’s been a nice busy week, feeling like things are kicking in to gear around LFF (although there is the spectre of the strike, oddly). I heard more about other parts of the organisation with a workshop around Replay, and a meeting with the research and statistics team.

Maybe a little too much socialising through the week, but its important to catch up with colleagues and it was nice to chat more with Olivia and Jem as we get close to our 6 month mark here. And nice to catch up with a friend who also started a new job in web development around the same time I started here.

We have hit Barbenheimer day – loving being at a serious film institute which is screening both of these massive movies. Its been cool to hear initial reactions, see the buzz around cinema going, and the effort people are going to to see these films (sold out back to back screenings at IMAX bar the 4ams this weekend). I will be seeing Barbie on Sunday and Oppenheimer in a few weeks (I am too committed to staff tickets to get into IMAX sooner).

There is some way to go on how we can plan work, I think colleagues could have been more involved in planning the UX review. Will be looking for opportunities to use our initiative writing to share more widely, earlier. Team processes are still in really early days, so I think there’s loads to improve here.

Satisfied to have quite a bit ticked off the list this Friday with Editorial work progressing nicely, grid system in conversation with the developers and LFF underway.

Design history

It was lovely to chat to colleagues about the BFI brand and logos through the years this week, it is great when Slack manages to work like an office chat that people can overhear. It’s brilliant having lovely colleagues (Dan, Cat, Neil) who were up for digging bits out for me to see, just for curiosity really at this point. It does give you a sense of the longevity of the organisation when you see the history of 20th century graphic design reflected through the changes to our logo, signage and more. And also points to the way the organisation has morphed, through the separate branding for National Film Theatre and others. A little design chatter to make me feel at home.

Feedback and research

I attended a brilliantly run ‘How might we’ workshop for the Replay team. There were lots of new faces for me, and having heard a little about this project from Oliver and Olivia it was brilliant to have more insight, as well as learning a new workshop technique which I really enjoyed.

Had a great meeting with colleagues in the BFI’s Research and Statistics Unit who go through audience surveys monthly. The comments about the website don’t necessarily reveal much we don’t know, but its really useful to have a baseline for the issues going on which are being carefully tracked by the team. They were really enthusiastic and keen to work more closely on things, open to us adding questions to surveys (when there’s a need) and would also like to know what we’re up to. Will be good to keep in touch with them.

LFF

I’m looking at some tangible improvements for the festival site now, they will be small and not structural for this year, but I’m happy to be able to play a part in this while I learn lots about the festival, how it runs, and our audiences for it. And it feels good to be working on something that will be so publicly visible.

Watching/Reading/Listening

The Barbie critique begins, seeing it Sunday, so good to bear in mind this entirely fair critique that while Greta Gerwig can subvert the tropes of femininity and impossible beauty standards, the products that surround the movie will never do this… so can we relax and enjoy it? Maybe not!
And what about the idea of selling out, against the backdrop of IP based movie making..

Finished the lovely People From My Neighbourhood which got more and more joyfully surreal as it went on, delightful.

Interesting thinking about team histories, stories and design histories from Giles Turnbull

Next week

I will be continuing to be heads down on LFF, helping out on some interviews, and hopefully picking up some tweaks to form styling

Weeknotes 10
14 July 2023: Monthnotes

So it’s been a while… nearly a month. I’ve been touring the UK a bit, dancing in Glastonbury, resting in Cornwall, and wedding celebrating in Oxford with some work in between of course (!). Very lucky to have so much fun packed into my June, kindof nice to be home now though.

Glastonbury was of course totally magical, everything I’d hoped for in terms of brilliant, brilliant performances and just the attention to detail they go to… the festivals within the festival, stage sets and artworks, as well as things you can just happen upon. And how friendly people are! Music highlights probably Elton, Young Fathers, Fever Ray and Rina Sawayama. We got lucky with the weather too, which did make a big difference from the last time we’d been.

So, work! It’s really good to be back and able to get back into some of the projects, nice timing too to have a team catch up this week and hear more on OKRs and how those are developing. I feel like I’m back up to speed and have some meaty things to get into, although understandably we may have some stop start with summer holidays for other people.

Because its been a while this entry has a bumper set of links and stuff, just for my own reference really, so this is a long one.

Momentum

I did find coming back for a few days here and there tough for momentum. Think I probably need some more discipline for myself, due to momentum needing to come from me rather than coming back and being asked for lots of things and the nature of not having deadlines in the same way I used to.

I am feeling myself bothering people for input, I don’t know if I’m not self sufficient enough, or maybe this will level out over the time as I get used to things. But hopefully I’m not annoying people by asking to move things forward. Feels like for the things I have ownership of this is going to have to be like this.

Where to look for references

It’s been great to start thinking about small improvements for LFF site. I was feeling a bit constrained with what I know about audience view so I’ve started looking for inspiration elsewhere, starting with other film festivals. I was kindof surprised no one else seems to have got UX right for these (and maybe that’s a clue I shouldn’t be so critical of our site…). Anyway it was good to go through these to get more understanding of how they work, what the differences between other film festivals in terms of programming, scale etc.

Then looking into wider festival landscape - international arts festivals, fringes are quite useful as some have a similar volume of events, and individual booking. These do tend towards just listing a programme with straightforward filters, we don’t see much programme curation – I wonder how much issue programmers in these places took with this kind of decision.

Music festivals (and some film like SXSW) have an overall ticket booking which makes them a bit less relatable to mel – they don’t have the challenge of needing to browse a huge programme to make decisions, in advance in the same way.

I wonder if we should be looking even further afield - could we have an LFF site which you browse like iplayer or a news site? (although… streaming sites have such difficult UX that I don’t know if this is a useful comparison)

What could be applicable from iplayer is light customisation of genres/themes (as we have engaged members). It also has ways of browsing which are curated, next to streams of content with more traditional genres that are user friendly. In some ways this mix feels quite similar to how the mix of programmed curation vs audience wanting to browse.

Or if we make it more like a magazine site, it might be quite attractive to think about a more editorial version of the site - bringing the voices of programmers through much more.

Either way, we’re not there yet, but ideas to come back to at some point.

OKRs, initiatives etc

Still lots of thinking to do about how we’re working as a team, but its been useful to write up an initiative summary/ one pager for part of the design system (grids and spacing). Waiting to see if I can get some good conversations from this, to interrogate it further. It was good to link some of the bigger thinking I’ve been doing, to a practical piece which could improve the website significantly.

We also had team check in with OKRs, I know our product leads have been thinking about this tons, so it was good to be brought into this.

Hard to say at the moment if we are going to put in too much admin, but its great to see how its going.

Reminding myself of the aim to structure work:

Annual OKR

Quarterly OKR

Initiative summary

Work with others / Jira tickets

Related, or not, tried to get Chat GPT to help re write my ‘pitch’ for the spacing and grids, persuasively, made me laugh…  “Unleash the power of a revolutionary grid system and reusable spacing values to transform your website. Achieve visual harmony, eliminate inconsistencies, and boost productivity. Empower your team, captivate your audience, and elevate your design to new heights. Experience the extraordinary.”

Links

One pagers 
‘Radical candour’ - feedback - thinking about how to get more feedback from colleagues and create a better environment for this

Really powerful new functionality Figma variables - explained really well at Figma conference, loads to use here

Less practical, but super interesting talk from same conference on creating algorithmic colour picker at Meta, need to research other colour modes (LCH values)

Design system links:

Guardian - more like a brand guideline

Co-op - well balanced

Includes date of review prominently, plus changelog

Good amount of info, plus links to figma and code for more indepth use

Gitlab - more tech focused (appropriate for them) less easy to read/look at

Salesforce - very comprehensive token set

Watching/Reading/Listening

Back at the movies

Taxi Driver - great to see another from the top of the poll in the cinema

Asteroid City - meh

Name me Lawand - moving insight into the life of a young deaf refugee learning BSL and dealing with the british state

(And at home, loved The Bear series 1, ready for no 2, and not loving but can’t stop with And Just like That…)

Getting hyped for Barbie with the pink carpet looks

Threads

Thought this piece by Anne Helen Petersen was a good summary of how the ease of connection between insta and threads may also make it less enjoyable to use - the people you like following for imagery aren’t necessarily who you want to hear from in a written space

I did enjoy people’s going for sewing connections in their Threads openers – the BFI’s list of sewing scenes on film particularly (but for now the actual online sewing community that I like on instagram isn’t strong on threads)

Holiday reading

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner – had heard loads about this and did really appreciate the unflinching memoir of her mothers decline with cancer, her own grief, with a world of korean food to explore

Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen – very mixed feelings, sped through it, but I really think he’s gone downhill since earlier books

Listening

The Full English podcast

Dua Lipa’s interview podcast has a great range of guests, sucked in by the Greta ep

Olafur Arnalds radio shows

Glastonbury

Thursday: Carnival Soca show, Girls Don’t Sync

Friday: The Hives, Los Bitchos, Gabriels, Shygirl, Young Fathers, Arctic Monkeys, Fever Ray, Daphni, Jamz

Saturday: Say She She, Amadou & Mariam, Shame, Rick Astley/ Blossoms Play The Smiths, Rina Sawayama, Christine & The Queens

Sunday: Sophie Ellis Bextor, Nova Twins, Cat Stevens, The Hu, Flo & Joan, Lil Naz X, Elton John

Next week

Looking to hit the LFF UX review a bit harder 💪

Weeknotes 9
16 June 2023: Zoom in, zoom out

It’s been another good week, with lots of considering, strategising and planning, so it feels like I’ve been zoomed out to a high level for the design systems project. I hope this means after my leave I can get moving on some stuff and this won’t be an ‘all talk’ type situation.

It’s also just been a fun, sunny week. It was great to start the week with a workshop, that got my brain moving, and  I’ve also been out and about a lot. Massive highlight for Guys and Dolls at the Bridge theatre which was so joyful. A brilliant balance of technical production value being used to create a new take on the big musical. I don’t think the spectacle of west end shows is going to be as wow in the future. I do take issue with the word ‘immersive’ being used for tickets, but I don’t know what would be more appropriate – it is a big step on from the usual audience experience, but it’s no Punchdrunk. (And I don’t know why I’m worrying about it, ha)

Should be having a quiet weekend now before glastonbury – hope I’m not banging on about it too much, just getting really excited.

Strategy

Really brilliant to kick off the week with a strategy workshop by Amy Hupe and Ignacia Orellana. I have never really thought about how to do strategy but generally try to think about how work and projects can fit into bigger pictures so it was brilliant to have ways to put some of this thinking down.

It was also important to have an emphasis on action – not something I have put into practice quite yet, but I think this puts me in a good place for after break. Useful also to hear from people with similar challenges, as awkward as that is on zoom.

Thinking about the design system itself, it does feel like there are solid reasons for getting moving on it. Discussions with the developers I’ve had this week already support the need for it, but also give us opportunities to make a start, which is great.

Feels like I’ve been on a top level, and will need to get into the detail soon

Spacing

On the other end of the scale I’ve been looking for ways to systematise (or use tokens) for our spacing. Spacing is the thing I really haven’t been able to find neatness in the existing design, so I’ve been discussing how we can bring this in.

It’s really good to have colleagues who are up for it. I just need to look for a way to do it that will impose order in the most efficient way. It’s also such a fundamental that we may have knock on effects into typography… watch this space (groan… future weeknote title incoming…)

Feedback

Need to think about how to get more out of feedback, in a situation where I’m not with other designers.

Presenting work to other colleagues outside digital went well this week but I’m aware there have been things this week which might look different if I worked with other designers.

I have also found on non-design, written work, that people aren’t super forthcoming with constructive criticism, it’s makes for a nice environment to work in, but it might not challenge me, push me to the best solution. I think one way to do this might be to send things to people with more defined questions, so they know the kind of feedback that’s useful, and can keep it user centred rather than subjective.

Thinking again about the design system, it will be important to make sure there is rigour in my own process, as I won’t have that coming from anyone else. I think I need to trick my brain to put my crit eyes on to my own work somehow.

Links

​​Accessible design system

Space in design systems

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

Been to the cinema again this week for Soul of Stax, a really interesting look into the Stax Record company, mainly music focused but it did look at the background of racial tensions in 70s memphis

Absolute highlight of course to the Bridge Theatre’s Guys and Dolls but also reminded what happens when a reference overtakes the original…. I thought this song would be in it…

On a more meditative note, I also went to see an installation exhibition – Lotus Laurie Kang Chisenhale Gallery

Listening to Fever Ray and Young Fathers ahead of next week and reading a beautiful book taking short stories to the shortest level (sometimes a single page): People From My Neighbourhood. Perfect to take in just a couple of vignettes per train ride.

Weeknotes 8
9 June 2023: In focus

I have felt really focused this week and got a lot done. I’ve surprised myself by really enjoying a 5 day week (always one to dream of the 4 day week usually). After lots of short weeks in May, and an odd 2 day week with illness thrown in last week, it feels good to have enough time to get into stuff, and go into the office lots to collaborate with colleagues. Need to remember to enjoy it again next week as after that its a bit of holiday time again…

Things feel really positive, the development team were glad to have their sprint story point cards, which I designed using films for the Sight and Sound poll and I’m moving things forward in a few areas.

I should admit, I didn’t get everything done that I hoped this week, I’m still not amazing at completing things with no deadline, but will use imminent annual leave as a deadline to get a few bits off the list.

Team

It was a good week for collaboration with my developer colleagues. I think they appreciated the sprint cards, and the planning session ran a little smoother. It was just a fun contribution to be able to make.

I also had some good conversations with them about the design system and learning about the processes they have in place at the moment. At the beginning of the week I had felt a bit out of my depth trying to get the right questions in, but Paul generously shared his time later in the week to go through things which has really helped my understanding of where we’re at. And it was good to discuss that the BFI’s approach is to improve things where needed on a bigger level than I’m used to. The upside of being in house feels like we have more time for process thinking than constantly getting stuff out of the door.

I have also been able to hear more about Olivia’s recent user research interviews, and she has also been generous in supporting the discovery I’m doing for the design system. I have so much to learn about this area of work, so I feel really lucky to be in a team

I was able to quickly sketch ideas with Jem and Chris as well, and saw colleagues in the office, so it feels like I things are flowing together a little more.

I guess all this to say, it feels good to collaborate.

Discovery

I’ve been trying to work out how to bring some notes on conversations together. It was great timing to see how Olivia synthesises her research findings from user interviews. I have also been googling (see links below) to make sure I am understanding some of the terminology around this.

I am wary of striking the balance between making sure this discovery work is thorough (more thorough than I have done in the past) but also not taking up too much of colleagues time. I think people are happy to contribute, but it will be interesting to see if anything comes along that’s more pressing if we still all (including me) find time to prioritise it.

As I mentioned above, it is good to be able to spend time on prioritise internal work / process stuff. This feels really different from agency life, and I’m enjoying it more than I thought - ie not having a deadline or a set outcome.

Delivery

The UX meeting felt positive as we could share lots of smaller updates. I previously had fears about producing enough work, so its good to see a few things together which add up to more improvement and are examples of how iterative processes can work.

I am also close to sharing editorial work with that team, which will feel good to share more widely and work with a team outside digital.

Links

Alternatives to personas

17 alternatives - particularly useful for Design Systems project might be ‘mindsets’ - a scale/spectrum for different attitudes/emotions, maybe confidence, and engagement, or roles, which group around tasks

Minimalist personas - remove additional details which won’t have outcomes, remove demographic details which encourage stereotyping

Mindset mapping - mapping users on two scales: wide-narrow scope of thinking and high-low structure

Spectrums - around motivation rather than character

Discovery research / research analysis

Discovery mapping - interested in mapping the ecosystem (or a future ecosystem) for internal stuff to inform the design system

Running user workshops

5 UX workshops 

Report writing - usability findings 

Findings & insights definitions

Team collaboration

User centred disciplines - working together at GDS

Boosting collaboration 

Watching/Reading/Listening

Amazing to see the visually beautiful Le Mépris at the cinema, but it was hard to get past the intense misogyny of watching something from the 60s. Interesting to read the write up on our site, which focuses on the themes of artists selling out – I was too distracted to take much of that away from it.

Had to get a couple of station bestsellers for the journeys last week

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow which I liked

Shrines of Gaiety which was fairly fun to read on the train, but not amazing

Listening to Say She She

Podcast cognitive bias

A good way to persuade stakeholder is to show the risk involved in not changing anything - ‘if we stick with this system X, Y will happen, costs associated’ rather than ‘we should change to new way, costs associated’

Short term ways to mitigate harm - there is also longer term work in how to get people on the team (political and education work in terms of who is in tech)

Next week

Hoping to join a workshop trial for Design System strategy – this should fit nicely into the discovery pieces.

Also looking forward to a couple more films and a play, so should be a cultural one.

2 June: Away 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Weeknotes 7
26 May 2023: Just three things

Feels like this week has flown by, which is odd because it was the first full week in a while. It’s good to be in the swing of getting on with things.

I don’t feel like there’s a theme I can neatly wrap around, but that’s ok.

Great to have more input on design systems, more on that below. I have some more discovery to do after these two workshops, I think next week it would be good to take stock and set out what else should be part of discovery.

I’ve also enjoyed making the most of central London work life by popping out on lunchbreak and swimming in the lido. The lido by Tottenham Court Rd is a dream, I am enjoying having a new area to explore – even though its one of the busiest in London there’s loads to enjoy.

Another little fun thing, sprint cards arrived this week, so will get them out to people next week, its great to do little improvements to help the team.

On a less positive note, it’s odd to be a new person (which I think I still am) with changes going on to the organisation, will be interesting to see how that pans out over the coming months.

I’m also finding the lack of clarity about people’s leave a bit odd, I know this would be tricky to get in place, but it can make things feel disjointed, something to pick up on a transparency note at some point.

Workshop

I ran my second design systems workshop with another group across the team. I did feel less prepared than last time maybe because I had overprepared last time, I could have balanced that out and thought about this one a little bit more!

This one felt a bit more general than the content slant in the first one which is good, I guess,  but we do need to learn more from the developers - so focusing follow up on this as my next step.

It does feel like a big task as we are thinking about documentation and guidance across lots of discipliens

But just need to remind myself (and manage expectations) that we won’t solve everything, and we’re not starting from scratch

As I said above, maybe some more planning for what else I want to know for the next phase – I’ll talk to Olivia about the exercise she’s mentioned before, for a knowledge board.

Documentation process

I have taken my eye off the ball a little in terms of documenting the existing site.

I wasn’t totally systematic about what was getting included, and did it organically as I needed to design things.

I did a tidy up, making sure components that have been worked on during my time here are up to date on the elements file, and it reminded me I haven’t been adding as much as I could.

So this is a reminder that I want to get the momentum back up on that (after next week) - and maybe need to put a system in place (working off storybook list…?)

Player

It’s been great doing more research on the Player user journeys and working with that team.

I think we can make some good simple  iterations to the subscription process.

Again just the start of what could be a huge area of work, so trying not to be daunted, and be honest about what needs to change, to make things work for users.

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

As mentioned above, I popped out on my lunchbreak to see Nathalie du Pasquier works at Pace Gallery

The bright shapes

A couple of podcasts about art - quality vs energy - Art School – the White Pube

Discussion based around Thomas Hirschhorn’s work – Energy being described as the personal reaction you may or may not have, felt really in line with how I go to galleries

I wonder if this applies to film too – although the bar for making a film is so much higher than other types of artwork

‘I believe something we are the author of has an energy, or should have an energy I hope. Then I can relate, I can make contact to it, because there’s an energy of some love, pain, sadness, something somebody put in and I can catch it. I must get the energy. Without - and this is very important - without knowing already the context, all the information, all the excuses of why is it like this and not like that.’

Similarly Siri Hustavedt on Great Women Artists Podcast talks about the idea of two artworks, the one they made and the one you experience. What you experience includes your own emotion and reaction, its specific to you.

She also museum as the experience rather than individual artworks – people don’t spend long with an individual artwork, and may remember the emotion and reaction to the visit as a whole

I guess sometimes a single work stands out

She also talks about the only way you remember any of what you saw is if it triggers emotions

Don’t think I watched a movie this week – just Succession, of course

I have a run of stuff booked at Southbank in June so will be back to that more soon

I finished Deborah Levy’s Things I Don’t Want To Know

Great essays about writing and being a woman, and short memoir about growing up in South Africa

Listening to Ebo Taylor, bank holiday ready…!

Next week

Only have 2 days in, so I will focus on tidying up work from Player user journeys

And going to be picking up intranet work soon, the week after to make sure that doesn’t drift out

Weeknotes 6
19 May 2023: Discovery

This week has been quite workshop-y, which has been great to do as some of this has been in the planning for a long time. It’s also been good to spend time talking with a range of colleagues, I feel connected to the team.

I’ve been trying to keep an open mind, I’m starting to feel less new, so maybe I need to stay tapped into that a bit. Sometimes it feels daunting to be at the start of a project which doesn’t have an end goal or timeline this isn’t how I’m used to working so its really hard to train myself out of it. I do think it is good to be able to say to a team in a workshop, I genuinely am open about what the end result of this work will be, we can shape this work together. This wasn’t really possible in previous job, where projects had to have a scope before they started.

Excitingly, I also had a preview of the beginnings of the LFF artwork for this year, so it feels like the start of a collaboration with the Design Studio too.

Running discovery with the team

The surprise of the design system discovery workshop was that it ended up feeling quite weighted towards content and how we use our components when we build pages, rather than how we build in development.

The idea of confidence came up a lot from people, wanting a source of truth, and wanting to spend less time making decisions. In some ways I wonder if this is a culture thing, related to previous documentation and ways of working or part of people’s nature. But I want to make sure we work towards something that can support them more.

Of course, we can’t say yet whether this slant towards content was to do with the voices in the room this week, or if content is the area that we’re missing documentation on (....or the docs are just too hard to find).

It’s great to have an open mind and feel like maybe we uncover something which isn’t the project I thought I was doing. It will be interesting to see if the mix of people in the second group next week makes a difference. Anyway, I will follow up on this after the next one either way, and see if I need to draw more out of the development team.

Player - trying to think like a user

We’ve done a couple of sessions going through user journeys as personas, for signing up to Player. It really showed me the limitations of my own empathy. Even just doing this with three of us, there were lots of points where it was hard to see realistically what choices someone would make, there were so many assumptions it brought into question for me.

It makes me excited to do some user research, on the other hand, it makes me wonder about the limitations for research, if we do interviews/prototypes with just a few people, what can realistically be drawn out from that.

Anyway, really good to be shown how many assumptions I’m making, second to second when I look at design and will try to keep questioning these again and again

Bat Walk

Throwing in a non work one, but it was just last night, and it fits my discovery theme… Last night I did a bat walk in my local park.

We had sensors to pick up their echolocation and we saw actually saw loads, I keep describing it as ‘the little park’ but its amazing what wildlife is in there. I guess this is the benefit of moving to the suburbs…

Really good to concentrate on something in nature, rather than just pounding round the park in 15mins to ‘get fresh air’ and thinking I’ve had time in green space. And felt like discovering something under my nose.

Links

How to write shit documentation – a really good talk which fitted well with the design systems discovery, especially around content made some notes here. 

And theres loads more to look into from the conference too

Was also heartening that I am starting the Design System process with internal user research

Design tokens thread – to re-read next week and get to the bottom of it, with a dev maybe!

Two Cog sites I was a part of went live, there can’t be too many left to see

Liverpool Biennial

Soho Theatre

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

The arguments rage on for 'can you separate the art from the artist?'

Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson – what a dream of a book

Could Heaven ever be like this  and Caleb’s tracklist for the book

Jai Paul, thanks to Oliver, and this Daphni banger

Next Week

Onwards with the discovery

12 May: Day off

Just briefly added things I looked at this week

Links

Starting a design system

Against Atomic Design 

Mainly against the naming - which makes sense as it doesn’t always translate to how people build

And the confusion around use of language for design vs dev

Also relates to this twitter thread from Luis at Figma

Watching/Reading/Listening/Looking

Alice Neel at Barbican

The Swimmers on Netflix

Gee’s Bends Quilts - part of Souls Grow Deep like Rivers at the RA

Weeknotes 5
5 May 2023: Looking ahead

It’s been a great week for the team, with Chris starting as the venue product manager which makes the team complete and our full team day.

The day was great, with more time to get to know people, look at objectives and roadmaps. This was the wider understanding of direction that I have been looking for. Great to have that time with everyone to understand what the goals are, and what other people are up to.

It felt really good to know this stuff so I can fit work with it, and pitch stuff to the team that’s a little bigger that what I’ve been working on so far.

It fitted well for me as it came at my 3 months mark at BFI (well next week) so I can also review objectives and be thinking about what my next ones are.

It's also a chance to think about ways of working and ways of staying on track with these things. I think we’ll have more discussions around this. It’s important to me with the switch away from project based working to think about how to stay on track, assess things, and also have the moments to celebrate.

Personal concern is maybe coming across a bit too keen, I was really pleased to have this direction, but don’t want to come across as impatient. I don’t really know the rhythm of these things and how soon we might expect to work on this stuff.

Risk

The concept of risk came up a lot, from the tech side of things, and the product roadmaps. Perhaps it feels like a slight tension between the iterative idea that we can move ahead with things, and change if they aren’t perfect.

Overall I think the BFI strikes me as risk adverse, and slow moving, to the point where things don’t change enough as they should.

I do understand that’s often the case with large organisations, so we’ll see what the possibilities are like now we’re more on a course with goals to be aligned around.

OKRs

I learnt about the concept of Objectives and Key Results and need to do more reading around this.

I think these are quite vision-y, in a way that helps, and feels exciting, for an organisation like this which is quite driven by day to day grind (or feels that way, when the team size means people’s time is absorbed, perhaps that’s a fairer way to put it )

I was really glad to see what Neil & Cat’s objectives are for our department, and how aligned they are with the issues I could see on arriving here. There aren’t results to measure alongside these yet, so it will be interesting to see what those are, and what the rhythm for checking in on these will be. From the reading I’ve done people seem to check on them very regularly – will be interesting to see if this can be done without being burdensome. I guess we have to have that in order to keep them relevant.

My own goals and objectives

After 3 months here the main things I have achieved in terms of output have been smaller visual differences, but I think that’s ok for now. I do think  a big part of being in a new role for the organisation is around the process objective for the department, ie as a champion for user centred design.

Looking back at my probation objectives it does feel like they’ve broadly been achieved. There are a couple which aren’t fully there, but are getting there.

In terms of setting new ones, I think there are things to build on from what I’ve already done, as well as ones stemming from the OKRs that I can be a part of.

I think learning more about agile means perhaps looking at whether we can run some projects with design sprints as well as the dev sprints. I don’t know exactly how that would look when people have lots of other things going on, but worth thinking about for some of the pieces of work coming up. (useful run down in this article about how to get the user research in ahead of the design sprint) May need to talk to Josh about if any of the website work was done in sprints before.

I also have been referred to as ‘product owner’ for the design system, so could also take that as a jumping off point, to look at a roadmap for the design system itself. On the other hand, is it true we even have a design system… Lots of discovery for this ahead, so more on that soon.

Links

OKR links from Neil:

• Google re:Work primer on OKRs
• One of my former colleagues wrote up how we used them at GDS, here

These are the 2 books I've read and found useful:

• Radical Focus, Christina Wodtke
• Measure What Matters, John Doerr

Design system links:

Organising levels: Atomic 2.0

Brad Frost on tech side of design systems and I liked his definition: A design system is the story of how your organisation designs and builds digital products

Watching/Looking/Reading/Listening

Watched The Godfather II in NFT1 on Sunday, I thought I was too tired for it, it was brilliant, was so happy I went.

Also saw live comedy for the first time in ages, Frankie Thompson’s Catts was absolutely batshit, in the best way. A new form of lipsync/clip comedy which I haven’t seen before, somehow bringing meme/internet culture into a live space. Hard to describe, but definitely a brilliant ride.

Visited Action, Gesture, Paint at The Whitechapel Gallery, an amazing look at female abstract expressionists, with a few artists I knew and loads I didn’t. Beautiful combinations of movement and colour to take in.

Reading: Oliver has kindly lent me Open Water so looking forward to that, in the meantime dipped into the Story of Art without Men which matched up with my exhibition trip.

Next week

The weeks are getting shorter, will just have 3 days next week, so need to concentrate. I’m going to do some preparation for my discovery workshops the following week.

There’s some tidying to be done with heading styles, which may inform lots of the system spacing work, so that will be a good conversation to inform other bits. And will have to return my mind to design tokens.

Weeknotes 4
28 April 2023: Digging in

This week has sped by a bit – worrying as the next two are only 4 days, we’ll see how that goes.

Feels like I’m getting my teeth into some bigger areas – we met on editorial developments today, the systems stuff is gaining pace and starting a discovery piece of work with the Player team. Feels good to have larger projects alongside some smaller refinements.

I’m also obsessed with my gardening, we’ll see how long I last on that!

On a separate note, I also attended Cog’s Breakfast Briefing with Anne from the Audience agency. They’ve been collecting data around cultural participation through the pandemic, and have some worrying findings around the cost of living crisis at the moment.

Presenting work

It’s been good to present work to others in the organisation. Today’s meeting with the editorial team, and meeting earlier in the week on intranet imagery both felt valuable.

It’s highlighted to me how much I have to learn about how things work, and underlines points from a few weeks ago, that I won’t be briefed with the background I’ve had when I worked externally.

I wonder if I’ll look back and think I’ve overpromised or been too ambitious on some of these. Because I’ve been working on smaller refinements its felt exciting to have bigger areas to think about so maybe I’ve gone wild without scope. The ‘define’ element of work would be good to push from my side, define a brief, define user needs.

I think I’ll need to be proactive in pushing these along, asking for feedback as everyone has their own priorities, so reminder to do that.

Systems and naming

Really amazing to have others thinking about systems – the developers have been discussing Tailwind and has lead them to rethink some processes to get more consistency.

We decided that defining some design tokens based on what we have would be a good way to bring this kind of thinking into the site which initially I thought would be easy as I’ve done the legwork of listing out styles in Figma already…

Then I started reading about naming conventions for design tokens and blew my mind. All the examples are very clear about applying this to colour, but less clear about typography. I think each heading style will be made up of several tokens. I guess the idea is to be able to tweak these with lots of nuance, but I wonder if it would be ok to just define ‘heading 1’ ‘heading 2’ etc with values across screensizes. These values could still be edited.

Need further research on this, but I am feeling the lack of another designer a little bit. One to discuss in my PM design meeting.

Links Links Links

Design Systems/ Figma resources

Figma design systems link

https://www.designerlynx.io/

Button target size & accessibility

Smashing magazine - target sizes

Amy Lupe

Mobile nav research

Smashing magazine - mobile navs

Tokens…

What & why

From Material Design

Structure

Pyramid naming for tokens

Figma plugin

Allows import into figma as well as github

UX for streaming platforms

Netflix design

Breakfast briefing - Anne Audience agency

Cultural participation research March 23 

Audience agency cultural participation monitor

Watching/Reading/Listening

I had a brilliant time last night at the IMAX, couldn’t believe I hadn’t gone till now. I saw Dance Craze which took you onto the stage with lots of the Two Tone bands in 1980.

I’ve been listening to the soundtrack today as well as going further back to the first wave of ska with You’re wondering now and others.

Also enjoying today the newly released Jessie Ware album, forever my fave.

Next week

A couple of 4 day weeks in a row, will be interesting to see how this works, but have lots to get on with the bigger projects and excitingly, a full team day, including our new venue product manager.

Week notes 3
21 April 2023: three things

This week I’m listing out three things from the week. It’s a little bit simpler than my previous attempts at looking for themes in the week, but maybe that’s ok if it gets the notes written.

It does feel like there were some steps forward at the end of this week, feeling like I’m getting stuff done and being part of the team so maybe that can be my theme. A little moment of mini celebration.

A nice step forward at home is that our cherry tree got delivered this morning, there have been some shoots from the seeds I planted and I will have a few more things to grow arriving, so steps forward for our grey → green garden transformation.

More design systems

So here are my big (ish) steps forward… I have published my components and styles as a library in Figma, and I have invited the team to the discovery research session.

I suppose they are only ‘ish’ big steps because they are both starting points, rather than proper leaps into getting stuff done. But that’s certainly a good feeling for coming towards three months here.

So the component library – I’ve only currently published it to myself, to use between files. So in a way I’m not sure why it took me so long. On the other hand it has nowhere near all the site's components in there.

But it was worth doing now so that I can keep track of things that get put onto the production site. I am thinking they sit in a WIP file while I discuss them and they get developed. Then they can be added and published in the Library file when they are live on the site. We’ll see if this is manageable and easy enough to maintain.

The other big step is to have dates for the two discovery sessions. I have been planning these for quite a while now but have pushed it forward with great input from our user researcher, Olivia. We’ll be running them together next month.

I hope I can get people enthusiastic about them, I’m not totally sure what people’s tolerance for workshops is. But I will get a sense of this, and use it for their feedback and information sharing.

Team work with the devs

It’s really great to have developers who are also interested in consistency, and the improvement of the site we have all inherited.

Felix is looking into Tailwind – useful notes on Tailwind vs Bootstrap here

I’m not sure I understand all of the implications, but easier management and standardisation of styles seems like a great move forward that would help me with the design systems work, so I’m hoping the other developers are also keen on this and that we can work on this together.

I need to understand a little bit more but hope these could be worked with design system to be used in a token system of some kind.

I’ve also designed a new set of cards for the story points so bringing my little bit of design into sprint planning.

Presentations

I’ve been presented to as well as done some presenting this week. I was oddly nervous, even though this used to be second nature to meet a few months ago.

It was great being pitched to be an agency, kind of a full circle moment in a couple of ways. It was great to have them present what the BFI does, from a researched, outside perspective. I think it made me realise how indoctrinated I’ve already become…

The level of research was seriously impressive, and beyond what we would have done as an early stage pres at Cog. They were really research focused, I guess I need to understand if that’s a good fit for this organisation.

I also think it was a good reminder the thought and effort I used to put into structuring those kind of presentations, and to bring this back into my presentations to my team and the wider BFI.

We briefly presented to the wider T&DT directorate, a little intro to UX with Jem and Olivia. I still have in my mind that UX can be a jargony term, and there is a range within T&DT. It was good to put this out there and seemed to have a good enough reaction, as much as you can tell from Zoom.

I’m looking forward to talking to more of the BFI team in the coming weeks.

I also helped Olivia and Oliver prepare a research session, this was interactive so less of a presentation to me, but it was good also to see the level of preparation she puts into this to make it super smooth.

It made me go into the users shoes really well, so also something to think about for early prototyping of projects.

Watching/Reading/Listening/Links

No cinema this week, but I have of course been watching Succession, and started Beef, which I’m liking so far.

Reading – dipped into The Story of Art (without Men) by Katy Hessel – which I hadn’t put two and two together, but its the perfect follow up to the Ali Smith which I finished recently. How to Be Both includes a historical character who presents as (or transitions?) as a man in order to work professionally as a painter in renaissance Italy. It’s great to see the research into women who were able to make their living painting in these periods of history (and will of course get to more recent times)  

There is no design system (and thanks Samir for the design system links) – Another article about the system beyond the styleguide

Interestingly touches on whether Design System should be renamed for something more related to code

Co-ops Experience Library name change/relaunch – this move is to broaden rather than narrow the user group and the focus of it

It mentions the idea of experiences beyond digital products, but I can’t see where this exists in the system

Need to read: Design systems maturity

Skimmed this, and looks at the people side of making it work – definitely feels like its going to be relevant, and already part of my thinking in terms of working with the team on discovery work.

Listening to Jamz Supernova show, ready for tonight 💃

Useful tool: Figma walkthrough 

Next week

Hoping to do more presenting to the team - with an editorial meeting

Looking forward to catching up with Olivia and Jem, who started around the same time as me

Week notes 2
14 April 2023: ‘Solo designer’ or ‘multidisciplinary team member’

With my second attempt at weeknotes, I’ve got a little more disciplined about writing more quickly, which is easier as I’ve got less to reflect on. This is really covering 4 days instead of my impressions of the first two months of work.

I am still thinking (and feeling) the contrasts between the small agency way of working and this larger multidisciplinary team. It’s particularly interesting being a solo designer after years of agencies led by designers, and years of art college.

I think I am starting to feel my value (and therefore get job satisfaction) coming from the knowledge I can share rather than the specific design outputs, which are currently small.

Lots of my time this week was thinking about how to communicate my knowledge with non-designers. There are skills which feel innate to me which are actually the result of my working experience. I guess it feels good to me to realise things that feel simple to me aren’t to others, but I can help with that.

I have always thought the reason I like design is facilitating communication and problem solving, maybe at the moment that’s just facilitating people doing things themselves rather than doing them for them. People seem open to learning so I hope I can help in that way.

I also hope the way I can approach questions may be more holistic because of my design training than responding to individual small issues.

It does mean that this week especially I’m spending more time thinking about how to share knowledge and less time designing. But I think this is ok. It’s a different way for me to feel valued – I’m used to my value coming from work I can point to and say ‘this looks so much better/ this is so much easier to use’.

Of course this will shift over time, and week to week, but for now it’s good to notice that’s a different way to get job satisfaction.

Visual consistency

So one of the things I’ve talked about over the last few weeks and particularly this week is visual consistency. It does feel hard to think about assessing the whole site and achieving this, but it’s great that others want to support this work and give resource to it.

It feels hard to me at times to make decisions about a design I didn’t do, but the site is well enough created that I can see where their decisions were most of the time.

This will probably be a slog that we will come back to again and again, but it’s good to keep at it and it’s important to put this groundwork in and I will make sure to keep this up to date.

I am going to try to remain confident and decisive in this work, as most of the team don’t have more knowledge of the level of detail I’m looking at. I may also have to remember to keep other people positive on this work.

This is an area where non-designers (mainly developers, but also product managers) need to understand the value of some of the finer details of design – I think they do, and I’m grateful that people aren’t currently questioning the time this kind of alignment work will take. I hope that continues.

Knowledge sharing/ training

This was mainly mentioned in the intro, but basically, it’s useful for me to write down some of the basics, think through step by step the tools and the thought process of certain work.

It feels good to be reminded of how much I know. At the moment I’m applying this to how to deal with images for the intranet, but in the future I hope I can do this with lots of areas.

Of course not all tasks can be shared or done by other colleagues, but worth trying to share this as much as possible, and it’s particularly important when there isn’t much design resource.

People seem open in learning so I should make sure to be open in sharing.

I think this is also satisfying the part of myself which previously liked training interns and feeding into others work as a manager.

It’s different doing this from the position as a colleague rather than a manager, but I think its great to have this input and type of working, without the hierarchical nature of management structure.

Design system inputs

I’m also thinking a lot about how to ask for people’s input on the design system. We need to involve everyone, and make sure people aren’t put off by the word ‘design’. So far people seem to have a good understanding of this, and not feel that ‘it’s not for them’, I hope this continues.

It’s good that we have the job title ‘content designer’ in the team, its a reminder that ‘design’ doesn’t always mean visual.

I’m interested to hear people’s thoughts and hope I can share ownership of the future design system widely.

It’s been great to have the views of other team members on how to do this discovery work, so I’m enjoying learning from people with different backgrounds, feeling the reflection of the knowledge sharing I talked about above.

It’s also been good doing the intranet image work as a way to think about how the design system principles can be applied to other areas of work.

Watching/Reading/Listening

Top Hat & God’s Creatures

Not yet read: https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/get-support-for-design-system/

Next week

Emphasis on consistency likely to carry on – spacing and grids for discussion with developers

Finish discovery research plan on Monday

Discussions around Player – lots of meetings

Week notes 1
6 April 2023: Questions big and small (but mainly big)

Introduction – Why write weeknotes?

I’m new to this, this being writing weeknotes, but also my new job. I started as UX/Interaction Designer at the BFI almost exactly 2 months ago, its a new role with almost a new team around me, so there’s lots of being new going on. I’ve also been told this week that being new at the BFI lasts a year, and that we should enjoy it and be curious.

Part of this new role means starting new practices and processes, so I think its a good idea to be as reflective as possible, even if its uncomfortable, or vulnerable at times. I am uncomfortable with the idea of writing (and often make the self deprecating joke that I’m a pictures person), so I think this is a way for me to practice.

I think it’s important to share the value my new role at the BFI can bring to this team, and more widely, so I think this should be a way of articulating how I’m spending my time.

I’m also slightly uncomfortable with the change in pace that this job is giving me, so I think it’s good for me to keep track of what I am doing when there aren’t necessarily end points to projects in the ‘big red button moment’ I have been used to. I was already using the end of my Friday to choose some focuses for the following week, so I see this as an expansion of that.

What’s it like being new in the BFI digital team?

So I’m two months in, I thought I’d start by reflecting on what I think and feel about it. It’s impossible not to compare things to my previous role, a fast paced agency environment, so things feel strange to me which likely don’t to other people.

My big things: lovely people, change of pace and it’s huge. I’m sure these feel totally obvious to people who have been here for ages (and many people have), and I did tell myself I was prepared for them, but they still have felt hard to get used to (not how nice everyone is of course).

So the lovely people, it’s great how nice everyone is, I’ve felt really welcomed. I have noticed one downside to this which I think I am also falling into, as I try to fit in myself. Lots of people I have come across aren’t very direct. I think I’m even falling into that trap in trying to write this sentence, because I don’t want to be critical of the people I’ve met and who have been so welcoming. I think I’ll have to learn to ask more questions (below) so I can understand their expectations. And this also has knock on effects to pace…

The pace feels slow and unstructured to me, this is a combination of the new team building up, and the welcome means people are nervous to overload me. But the massive difference of course is that in an agency priorities were largely defined by budgets, so something I’ve been unsure of here is how to prioritise work. I think that will continue as we share with the organisation the new skills in our team, how will we prioritise how that resource is shared and allocated.

There are structures around development sprints, so I am starting to get a sense of when to time parts of my work so they can feed into them. Over time I think this will help, and may lead to me working in my own sprints that stagger off theirs.

The BFI is huge – I had realised during my interview process that I couldn’t get my head round the multiple areas and services, but I now know my expectation that I would soon have a handle on how things fit together is totally wrong. Again, this is a matter of contrasts, I’ve come from somewhere where I knew absolutely everything going on, it’s a classic big fish moving to the big pond situation, so just something to get used to.

Do we need a design system?

This definitely can’t be answered any time soon, so I’m managing my own expectations as well as everyone elses, but of course its been a theme of my first couple of months. Really this question leads on to many more.

The brief history is that the website project came with a design system – this was created in storybook by the designers and developers at the time and serves one purpose for some of the developers. I think there are lots of other purposes that a design system could or should cover so I’m exploring what we might need from it.

At this point even defining who ‘we’ is in this case is changing in my mind – designers, developers, product managers are the start, but what about content editors, what about other teams we work with?

Then there’s a question of output – do we need a full scale design system on its own website to achieve this? Luckily I was able to attend an open space chat about this subject last month. There was lots of talk about meeting people where they are, which sounds good in effect, is taking the user centered principles we want to design with on the main site and applying to this product - but is that too complex in practice?

This is a project where we can start small and simple, and iterate from there. This should be a way to gain feedback on what’s useful and what’s not, both in content and format. But I’m sure I’ll have many more thoughts on this as my time here goes along.

What do I need from design briefs?

I have been slightly tripped up this week by open questions. Maybe I’ve stopped flexing the muscle I used to use to get information from clients when they gave an initial brief, because I’m not thinking of colleagues as clients. I think this change in relationship goes both ways, they aren’t engaging an outside agency so they may have thought through their issue less before coming to me.

I have been thinking about what I can do to help people give me the information I need to help them with their work:

• What’s the driver for doing this work – a user need or an internal one?
• Who else is involved?
• What other considerations are there – maybe technical, maybe other systems or other projects taking place?
• What’s the timeframe – either formal deadlines or general expectations?
• What are the expectations for how involved I should be longer term in this area of work?

Watching/Reading/Listening

Everything I’ve seen at the cinema in the two months: Broker, In the Mood for Love, BFI Flare: Egghead & Twinkie, Peafowl and Afeminadas, Rye Lane at PeckhamPlex

This week’s BFI watch was EO which I enjoyed a lot (although I had a tear in the eye), but George found over the top in parts. Loved the score too, great to hear this in the cinema.

My listens have been contrasting, I have Rema - Calm Down in my head most of the time, but I’m also enjoying Dev Hynes’ Composed series on the radio.

And I’m delighted that the Normal Gossip podcast is back.

I’ve finished reading How to Be Both by Ali Smith, which after a slight wobble when the narrator changes in the middle has been great.

On the theme of design systems I’ve read about building them consciously.

Next week

I’ll be refining the plan for a discovery workshop on design systems, getting some small pieces ready for the developers, as well as starting on some new refinements.