Week 21: User research, team alignment and movies

Angie — one of our office dogs

• I still haven’t quite got settled into a rhythm of weeknotes, but it does help seeing others get stuck in. I’m enjoying reading these from Neil Williams.

• After prepping for our subject matter expert user interviews we finally got stuck in. Reminded that I love doing user interviews. They are very very rarely not just absolutely fascinating chats learning about people and interesting things. We talked to an academic researcher about mediation, a barrister and an ICU consultant. All hugely informative but lots of work to do to turn these sessions into actionable insights and analysis to inform our content work.

• We had a team session talking through our priorites for next year which was a really useful exercise in aligning everyone before writing our business plan. I really valued the experience and I think it should set us up nicely for the year ahead in terms of workload and expectations. Had a cracking dinner at The Barbary in Covent Garden. Seriously tasty food. It made me slightly re-assess my list of restaurants I’d written off for being too hard to get tables at. Watching a screening of Interstellar at the Prince Charles Cinema followed which was fun.

• Also watched Anatomy of a Fall at the Curzon Bloomsbury. Which was one of the best films I’ve seen in a long time. Really recommend.

• I spent some time putting in an application for a Churchill Fellowship. I stumbled across this scheme a while back and really like the idea of taking some time out to research international experience of a topic to see how we can improve something in the UK. My proposal was about looking into how can we improve DNACPR decisions by building shared understanding. Conscious not to get too invested, as it’s a long shot and I won’t hear back for months…

• I joined a new squash club a month or so ago and after a slow start have started to get some regular games which is nice.

• We had a the first of a number of content workshops to help us think through how we think about social media more strategically. Our strategy has always been a bit reactive and thoughtful historically. Perhaps a bit too thoughtful at the expense of getting our message out there repetively like the best brands or organisations do. I’m interested in the potential of this work to see how it can better showcase some of the great work of my colleagues. We’re working with Richard Roaf who I recommend.

• Had one more user interview today with someone who’s been part of a hearing at the Court of Protection. A fascinating session which I think highlights just how difficult our task is at de-mystifying and creating some clear, simple content on best interests decisions.