Other people's jobs are endlessly fascinating. At a birthday celebration a couple of years ago I got talking to Johnny, a family friend who works as an aquarium curator. He told me a surprising thing about his work: how little of his time he spends actually looking after the fish. Johnny's job is to look … Continue reading “Look after the water” – reflections 1 year into my work at NHS Digital
Tag: work
Put down all behaviour hurtful to informality!
Among my favourite times working at Orange - and there were many - was the chance to lead the UK organisation's design and usability team, doing user-centred design across the mobile and broadband business units. At the start of the assignment I talked with heads of all the teams whose services we worked on, to understand what was going well … Continue reading Put down all behaviour hurtful to informality!
Annual Report Number Two
A couple of Fridays ago, 14 of my favourite people gathered down at the Leeds Museums Discovery Centre for a bit of a get-together. Besides being responsible for some pretty amazing projects of their own, they'd all been involved in some way in my first two years of independent service design and innovation consulting. I wanted them to … Continue reading Annual Report Number Two
Annual Report Number One
Exactly 365 days ago I set out on my independent consulting adventure, complete with the de rigueur intent to document my progress in weeknotes. Week one was an intense blur of 5am flights, meetings and bratwurst; it went un-noted. Weeks two and three likewise. For a while, I told myself there’d be “monthnotes” instead. By … Continue reading Annual Report Number One
Who can draw?
"Think about this: walk into a class of primary school children and - with the teacher's permission, of course - ask the six-year-olds how many can draw. Every hand will go up. Now ask how many can read: perhaps two little hands will go up. Now walk into a secondary school and ask the 16-year-olds … Continue reading Who can draw?
The unsung office hero
Working for a company in a rapidly changing industry, it's easy to overlook the contributions of the team members who deliver the goods day-in day-out. It's important that these unsung heroes are recognised, and their milestones marked. So when my coworkers spotted that the office coffee machine was approaching its 100,000th drink they decided it … Continue reading The unsung office hero
Matt Edgar writes here 