Weeknotes 104

Balancing work with having builders in at home. Preparing for user testing. Escaping to Wales. Quite a busy week for 104.

This week has been a bit disrupted by our kitchen remodel. It’s meant working at home has been nearly impossible with water and power off and on, and lots of noise and dust between the hours of 8 and 4, so I’ve been out and about. A bit of coworking, a few coffee shop crawls, a couple of evenings to catch up and even an afternoon working in the van. This is exactly the kind of thing that freelance lends itself to and I’m extremely grateful.

The main thing happening on the project has been preparing for user testing:

• Getting the prototype to a stage where it’s done ‘enough’ to put in front of users. Figma has been great for this. Normally I prefer to get the prototype in code, in the browser, as close to the real situation as possible, but as this is a dashboard and the technical investment – charting libraries, complicated layouts etc – would be quite high, we’ve opted for clickable mockups.

• Writing up the invitations and discussion guide. It’s been a while since I’ve done this solo, and I’m very happy I stayed close to the work when I was leading projects, as it’s meant I’m not as rusty as I’d expected, and I owe a lot to the talented Design Researchers I worked with at TPX who I learnt a lot from, whether they knew it or not.

I’m slightly apprehensive about the research calls, but that’s quite normal, once the first couple are out of the way I usually loosen up and it comes easy. Fingers crossed that’s the case this time round.

These weeknotes are coming on a Monday this week as we spent the weekend in mid-Wales, visiting Aberystwyth, Barmouth and Machynlleth (happily avoiding the building site at home). It was great to get away, we stayed in a little Shepherds hut and braved the weather to do a bit of exploring, and made sure to visit the beach, which is our dog’s happy place.

Barmouth beach in the wind

Watching

Squid Game 2. It’s felt a bit of a grind to get where I am, episode 5, but it’s picked up and I’m not having to force myself to carve out time to watch it.

Reading

I started The Anglo-Saxons, so far I’m enjoying it, but it’s going to be a slow burn I think, while I juggle some others.

Listening

Sigur Rós. Not sure how I ended up getting back into Sigur Rós but it’s been a constant on my playlist this week, and as a bonus its especially good at filtering out background noise in coffee shops.