This was an intense but fulfilling week. It included two offsite days, which both required quite some preparation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The highlight was our design team\u2019s away day, for which 12 of us 14 came together. It was the largest group of designers at the DigitalService gathering in one physical location.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Friday afternoon, we had a thought-provoking exchange with Estonia\u2019s former CIO Siim Sikkut. He was in town to promote his new book \u2018Digital Government Excellence: Lessons from Effective Digital Leaders\u2019 and stopped by for an extended lunch and discussion session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Thursday, almost our entire design team came together. We spent a whole off-site day discussing things that matter to us, getting to know each other better and creating some sense of team spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
57% of the designers at DigitalService joined in 2022 alone. And there are 91 individual connections between us, which makes it difficult to have sufficient time for exchange. So having an entire day for us to take things apart, develop a shared understanding of our profession, and co-create new artefacts and ideas felt like a very needed luxury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our schedule was packed, including:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the morning ice breaker, we used a sheet for 13 minutes to let everyone find commonalities with each other. The task was to go around and find one unique commonality with each person in the room. The key was to cannot repeat the same commonality with anyone else.<\/span> That was done faster than expected. Among other things, people found out they have non-German passports, grew up bilingual, or that they both can do the splits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We were fortunate to have ample space in CityLAB Berlin<\/a>\u2019s impressive neo-classicist Tempelhof airport building to fill all walls with stickie notes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initiated by my colleague Charlotte, we reviewed the third draft of a set of design skills. We looked at 4 skill areas with 3 skills each, 12 in total. In the exercise, we had everyone read and note what the skills might it mean in practice and how they are applied. Then, designers rotated and collected open questions, while also trying to answer some questions left by others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before lunch, we explored the differences between roles in a team. In pairs, peopled marked which roles should be responsible for each question or task. They indicated who has the main responsibility, who shares responsibility, and who is contributing to a task. Then, we discussed how many were allocated to design and which were the most controversial allocations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n