Mike Gallagher

Amidst all of the strategy and re-platforming and various bits of normal delivery things, we are trying to get better at building this app as a kind of loose federation.

The strategy work continues and we’ve made a first draft.

I write science fiction, and science fiction isn’t about the future.

It surprises me sometimes that few teams propose big, radical ideas that would completely reshape the NHS App.

The size of it all carries us along More equals better, it’s what we want — “A New Kind of Water”, This Heat, 1981 Amazing how heat distends both matter and time.

We’ve been working on ways to improve the interface of the NHS App.

For most of this calendar year, I’ve been focussing my energy on the native re-platforming work.

We’ve spent a long time working toward a situation in which all of the designers in the NHS App team prototype in code.

This is the second of two notes on the particular way of knowing things that design represents.

In grad school, we used to talk about “thinking through making”, by which we meant that design ideas couldn’t be fully developed before you started making something.

My friend Mo is big on theory.

We’ve just had quarterly planning again.

Work on our native re-platforming continues.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the past few weeks translating.

One of the designers in the team has been on holiday for the past two weeks so I’ve stepped in to cover.

Out of all of the government design principles, “make things open: it makes things better” is probably tied for memorability with “do the hard work to make it simple”.

This week, I do not have the strength to elaborate on the various things that have gone on at work because my headspace has been completely overwhelmed by the murder of an ICU nurse by border patrol officers in Minneapolis (300 miles from the actual US bo…

While the team are making plans for what to design or research or build next, I’ve been hitting the road like some sort of wandering bard, telling the story of the work thus far.

We’re currently wrapping up our alpha looking at how to use native code to improve the design of the NHS App and this past week we put the the work through our internal design assurance process – imagine something like the mid-point between a standard des…

When asked what my job is, I usually say something like, “My job is to make it possible for everyone else to do a good job.”

We’re getting toward the end of our alpha looking into how we might approach redesigning the NHS App in native code.

Last week, the Health Services Journal (HSJ) podcast featured an episode about how patients were receiving cancer diagnoses via the NHS App before a doctor had a chance to have a conversation with them: Cancer Research UK told me their helpline nurses are…

Most designers don’t spend much time thinking about how their app might kill someone.

Public sector digital services in the UK have a specific set of design patterns that were originally developed by GDS for gov.uk.

Defining what “good” means when it comes to user experience design is difficult.

We’re now fully into the “let’s make some stuff” phase of our exploration of how to make better use of native code.

Being a manager or leader or whatever – being a person who works across multiple teams and attempts to help them all do something good together – I occasionally get asked to participate in forums outside of my own team.

In Japan, you encounter a lot of restaurants and shops that do just one thing.

Right now, the NHS App is mostly a website.

When people in the NHS discuss strategy, tactics, and how hard it is to change the current direction of travel, you often here phrases such as “its like trying to turn an oil tanker”, but that analogy has never sat particularly well with me.

I’m working on plans for a new round of work that will explore our general approach to designing the NHS App, our design system, and how we make use of native technology.

A small but important piece of discovery work that is investigating how new approaches to technology might affect the way we design is wrapping up and I’m trying to get ahead of whatever comes next.

Earlier this week Frankie and I published a post on the NHS’ Design Matters blog about prototyping in code and the work we’re doing to improve the NHS prototype kit.

I was on holiday when the NHS 10 Year Plan came out, which meant that I got to avoid the initial frenzy of activity that was inevitably going to surround a big new government plan.

This past week we had the latest instalment of quarterly planning for NHS England’s Products and Platforms (the sub-directorate that the App team live in).

I know that a lot of people hate personal development plans.

Suffice to say that things in the US have been chaotic over the last six months.

I’ve been covering for one of our design managers[1] who has been out of work for a little while.

In a system as complicated as the NHS, pretty much all work is collaborative.

I’ve just finished The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman (see: last week).

I’ve just started listening to the audiobook of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman.

When I was hired by NHS Digital in 2022, my title was “lead designer”.

My first day back from a long holiday was spent in a full-day workshop.

This was a whirlwind of a week, I’m about to be on holiday for a while, and I am definitely running low on energy.

It finally feels like spring.

This week felt like a return to normal service.

This was a week of two halves.

I’m currently reading Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Alexievich.

When asked what my job is, I typically say that my main responsibility is making it possible for the team to do good work.

This week started, or really last week ended, with a short trip to Paris to see Ingrid Caven (who is 87!)