Weeknotes from Paul Smith

Continuing last week’s theme, I’m still reflecting on my personal and professional life.

The treadmill got faster In the time it’s taken me to get my act together, update this site, and start weeknoting again, everything has accelerated.

Gently easing myself into writing weeknotes again.

Placeholder for me to write weeknotes now that I have upgraded the outdated NetlifyCMS.

The week of not much note Monday - Mock service assessment I spent the day helping the ‘Apply for a grant for affordable housing’ service team to prepare for their upcoming Alpha service assessment.

‘Time-hopped’ with new team members Recently we’ve had new contractors join the department to help with the programme of work my team are responsible for.

Work happenings Presented to the MadeTech Design Community A few weeks ago I was contacted by Jon (lead interaction designer at MadeTech) and asked if I’d give a short informal talk about my work creating Figma flow diagrams.

A frozen mid-January week as an unordered list: Bought new Pentel ‘Sign’ pens I love these for sketching flows and rough wireframes on paper.

Monday 9th A 05:30 alarm for a trip from Manchester Piccadilly to Bristol Temple Meads for a meeting at the Planning Inspectorate.

Goodbye 2022 As this is my first weeknotes of 2023, I’ll say goodbye to 2022 but don’t worry I’m not going to write a lengthy review of last year.

Long week was long I’ll be honest, this week was a bit of a slog.

Things I did Spent the day in a real office It has been a few weeks since I last ventured out of the house so when my lovely friend Kerry suggested a catch-up and coffee this week, I didn’t need asking twice.

Monday I was on leave from work as noted last week.

Things I did Created a ‘Service status’ page for the planning data service.

Things I did Quite a busy week, some of the things I got up to were: Began creating designs in a coded prototype that will help my department (DLUHC) to give feedback to local authorities about the planning data they publish.

Things I did I volunteered to run a workshop at Design Systems Day 2022 which is organised by the GOVUK Design System team.

Hello, me again!

Wearing multiple hats This week I found myself doing something I said I wanted to avoid, which was ‘wearing a different hat’.

I took a break last week from Weeknotes, primarily because I had forgotten to keep a log of each day and so found myself struggling to remember things worth sharing.

It is still the pre-election period in the UK, so with that in mind these weeknotes continue to have a more personal slant to them for the time being.

Starting to get up to speed Week 3 as Senior Interaction Designer with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and I’m starting to feel as though I’m getting up to speed, or at least, to a place where I can make myself useful and meaning…

In a sombre week for the UK, I: Read 'Embrace the grind by Jacob Kaplan-Moss and really loved the message.

Monday It was Easter Monday (a UK public holiday) so I: Walked our dog Ted around one of his favourite parks.

Things I did I start a new role at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government next week, so I have been preparing, getting access to emails and that sort of thing. – Thank you to Paul, Matt and Ben.