This week marked my first year at Digital Service. While the number of my weeknotes was a good indicator and reminder of the progress, it came somehow faster than expected now. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve done some incomplete reflection of what I\u2019ve done, not done, and why. I find it difficult to measure my work and impact at this point. The design team has grown by over 50%, and the designers are doing important work across several areas. We have established more structures where needed and aim for a good flow of information across teams. But there is more work to be done in that aspect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The things the design team has made a significant contribution to I am proud of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The things I wanted to have made more progress on:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am progressing on all these, but I wanted to be somewhere else at the end of year 1. We will get there in the coming weeks or months, as their value is undeniable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sonja, our first in-house user researcher, started this week. We opened the role last summer, and it took us various months to find the right person willing to be hands-on, build the structures, and bring the profession forward. She joins Lisa, who has worked on a new discovery project as a freelancer since April. Lisa will soon have insights to share that help Sonja look at the bigger picture across the organisation and its projects. Together, I hope they can identify the most significant gaps and development areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Coincidentally, our colleagues from the German statutory pension insurance, a public body, had reached out about collaborating on user research operations recently, and we went on a call on Sonja\u2019s second day. The digital transformation team there has been\u00a0working with our Tech4Germany fellows<\/a>\u00a0on the same topic last summer and autumn. Now, they want to pick it up again. There are a lot of open questions, but we are curious and interested in hearing more. So we will talk again in a couple of weeks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I helped designer Agnieszka to join an infrequently offered introduction and onboarding to the\u00a0Federal government style guide<\/a>. Working on our digital identity app that tries to follow the style guide, attending the session made a lot of sense. She met with various other designers and design and communications managers from Federal-level agencies and departments there. A day after, we joined a design exchange session with colleagues from other organisations working on a similar app to help them iterate their visual design language adapt and the Federal style guide too. As it defines very little for mobile applications, there is enormous room for interpretation, but together we try to make sense of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Friday, I led a round table on shared style guides, elements and web components. It included half a dozen designers and engineers from various teams. Everyone gave a brief update on what they are doing now and how it contributes to shared components. We then discussed synergies and further cross-discipline and cross-project collaboration. The developers, notably Joschka and Leonie,\u00a0have put some design tokens and CSS framework together and up on GitHub<\/a>. In the coming weeks, we will run a lunch and learn session to get more people involved in this collaboration exchange, most importantly product managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next week, we\u2019ll have an international call on \u2018designing digital certificates and wallets\u2019. It\u2019s going to be the first part of a mini-series. We will hear from UX designers working for and with the Ministry of the Interior in the Netherlands on their national identity app, which is linked to related EU efforts. We might also hear from Australia\u2019s Service NSW mobile team from New South Wales \u2013 next week or in part 2 in a few weeks. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWhat\u2019s next<\/h2>\n\n\n\n