to continue some work started on the away day 2.5 months ago<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\nOn Wednesday, the German development agency GIZ and the Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development invited me to their \u2018digilab\u2019 lunch talk series to speak about \u2018innovation labs for transformational policy\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Friday, we had the internal DigitalService winter festivities, for which our office got transformed with plenty of seasonal lights for us to have a meal, a laugh and dance together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The year feels like it\u2019s coming to an end. Things are a little bit slower, but still not slow. And I\u2019d still like to do plenty of things before my break. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taking stock, taking steps<\/h2>\n\n\n\n With the design team reaching 15 people and two-thirds of us joining DigitalService in 2022, we need time for a more profound exchange. So we took an afternoon to recap the year, appreciate everyone\u2019s work and make progress with some of our discipline workstreams. We looked at the number of people we included in qualitative research formats, how we made the design team more visible and established new internal-facing formats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Taking a cue from what worked well last year at GDS, I shared a form to \u2018submit an appreciation for another designer\u2019. As the team has done a tremendous amount of work over the last months, I wanted us to reflect on it and appreciate the many things done and achieved together in 2022. So everyone could submit short appreciations for colleagues. It could be about a specific piece of work, approach or behaviour \u2013 or something else. In the end, everyone received various anonymous appreciations, which we read out in the afternoon, taking turns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In another block for the afternoon, the 5-people design principle working group shared their preliminary draft. My colleagues Carina and Marlene facilitated a 2-session to familiarise everyone with the principles, raise feedback, check what\u2019s missing or redundant, and think about what to do with the principles. With clever prompts, we went through all 7 proposed principles and left plenty of comments and suggestions. The cues included questions like \u201cHow would you explain this principle to someone who has nothing to do with design?\u201d, \u201cWhen could this have helped you? Was there a situation\/ conflict\/empowerment around this in your work life?\u201d or \u201cWhat would help you to make this more tangible in your everyday life?\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Design principles must be relevant, applicable and help resolve situational questions. So I\u2019m looking forward to seeing where this work is going and when we can share it more broadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n