Category: Weeknote

In week 218 at Digital Service, Martin participated in the presentation of a paper on common digital identity components and how they work in practice, a document co-created and co-presented by user researchers from 7 public sector organisations. Martin also worked on training, supported a qualitative study, and discussed spend controls.

Week 217 brought the design and user research discipline together for the yearly summer offsite. Consisting of almost 50 people now, the discipline is bigger than ever, which demanded some collective reflection and sensemaking. During the week, Martin reviewed a cross-government paper in the making, pitched the open roles at a meetup and continued to interview candidates.

Martin was away for 2 days at a leadership offsite during his week 216 at Digital Service. He participated in the annual salary cycle workshop and received useful training. He also got a blog post about the delivery principles published, and interviewed more candidates for open roles.

Martin went to Copenhagen for Future Days in his week 215. Before doing that, he spoke on a panel on accessible services and inclusive organisations. He also saw a new government website we sketched 10 months ago finally go live.

In his week 214 at Digital Service, Martin co-presented at the CityLAB Summer Conference on ‘Services that work and build trust’. He also co-hosted an evening meetup on ‘Money and taxes’, worked on service design training and spoke to Norwegian colleagues.

In a packed week, Martin supported Global Accessibility Awareness Day activities. He published a new blog post on progress in accessibility. He also witnessed the launch of a new resource and the extension of a tool. On Sunday, he also joined UX Camp Europe to give a talk.

Martin worked a shorter week due to a public holiday, but then used that day to meet with a colleague in Latvia to compare notes. He also interviewed more candidates, made staffing decisions, and worked on a new blog post on accessibility efforts.

Martin celebrated 4 years at Digital Service. He also continued interviewing candidates, preparing new roles, planning May and June events and participated in an open exchange with CTO Erik.

In his week 209, Martin recorded an accessibility podcast, participated in concept testing sessions for the Service Standard and met a UX designer from the State Pension provider. He also ran into colleagues in the public sector with strong views on government branding – some demanding greater boldness, others purposeful blandness.

Martin spent 3 days in Brussels attending PolyFutures, an event organised by the European Commission, during his week 208 at Digital Service. He also attended a jobs-to-be-done reunion meetup and spent more time writing articles.