Weeknotes 22nd November 2024
Highlight of the week was spending a day face to face with the user research leadership team. We now have 9 permanent lead user researchers in post and another about to join in a couple of weeks. This means we have user research leadership embedded in most portfolio areas to oversee practice, standards and development of our community as well as forming part of their area’s senior leadership team. A couple of years ago the number of leads was less than half of this and seeing (almost) everyone in a room together made me take stock of how far we have come and how powerful it is as head of user research to have such a brilliant group of talented people within the leadership team.
It was a similar experience a few weeks ago when we brought the user centre design centre of expertise leadership group together face to face. This was (almost) all the leads from the user research, content and design professions and the heads of UCD. There was over 30 people in that room and I remember looking round and thinking how incredible it was to have all those great minds leading UCD in the organisation. It is a far cry from about 5 years ago when it was just Tero and I. I have said it before, this work isn’t easy, but this group of people mean that it is easier, easier to make progress, easier to deal with the challenges and easier to keep going.
Also this week, I joined a face to face all hands with our Chief Operating Officer Emily and later met with her and other colleagues to talk about the work we are doing in product in platforms to support the NHS.
Ben got a number of our digital primary care service design and senior service designers vacancies out this week. You can find these at the links below
Service designer https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/working-for/#!/job/UK/West_Yorkshire/LeedsLondonSouthportExeter/NHS_England/Service_Design/Service_Design-v6756222?_ts=1
Senior Service designer https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/working-for/#!/job/UK/West_Yorkshire/Leeds_London_Southport_Exeter_other_sites_be_agreed/NHS_England/Service_Design/Service_Design-v6756429?_ts=1
This built on the work Sarah has done to get our final digital primary care user researcher vacancy filled. This role closes on Sunday and you can find it by following this link https://www.england.nhs.uk/about/working-for/#!/job/UK/West_Yorkshire/Leeds_London_Southport_Exeter/NHS_England/User_Research/User_Research-v6754458?_ts=14880
I joined a community transformation vision workshop lead by our policy colleagues, caught up with Shaz who just joined our customer experience team, got together with colleagues to look at work on neighbourhood, caught up with Jill and Sooze about our UCD contract and attended a really useful session arranged by Helen for our Central Product and UCD leadership team looking at how we work together moving forward.
Had a few people asking about our AI and UR work we are doing. Our UR finder is currently in private beta and Sam has been working with the team to re-platform it and get approvals to move it to public beta. This will lead to a more sustainable and enhanced product. Will share more when we have it.
Big thanks to the colleague who stopped to check on me in the office when I had my head in my hands trying to sort out a migraine. I don’t know who he was and although I was fine, it made my day to know that if I wasn’t ok, someone would reach out to help.
Some of things I will be doing next week
- Observing user research in our Leeds lab — Aaron has been doing some great user research with people with access needs so really looking forward to this
- Meeting with the successful bidders from the year long procurement I was working on that has finally got through all approvals
- National usability survey workshop
- Digital front door oversight group
- Primary care UCD community of practice
- More work on neighbourhood
- Trying to get the ketchup song out of my head. It has been in it all week!
