Weeknote 8th July 2022

It’s been another short week for me as I started the week being off with Covid. There’s a lot of it about here in the UK, well worth thinking about your risks for the foreseeable future. I’ll certainly be continuing to wear at least FFP2 masks in crowded or confined spaces, especially as I’ve been reading that immunity to current strains is so low people are repeatedly getting it within weeks. I’ve been doing some reading on CO2 monitors and air purifiers this week as well.

With plenty of rest, vitamins and sleep I am feeling better now and got back to work. So this week I’ve been:

• Catching up with what’s been going on while I was away and off sick – my colleague has been doing some testing of our form building prototype with users with low digital confidence, and exploring the review process for forms before they are published.
• Planning out our research process for the rest of the private beta for GOV.UK forms, which takes us into early 2023. While we’re taking an agile approach, it can take a fair bit of time and work to recruit and onboard partner organisations so I’ve been mapping out how this can be lined up to allow us a regular stream of people to do research with as the product is developed.
• Getting set up to work with some new partners next week. We’re aiming to work with around 10 central government departments during the private beta phase of the project. Looks like partners 2 and 3 are pretty much ready to start and I’ll be kicking off with them in the next few weeks while my fellow user researcher on the team is away.
• Creating some more ambient music for my Synth Soundscapes channel on YouTube. I tend to work on this in batches to keep up with the weekly posting schedule. This time I’ve been working on adding more depth to the pieces.

After catching up and doing lots of planning this week, I am looking forward to getting on with some more research next week. I’m also looking forward to getting back in to some of my side projects, hoping I feel fully better next week and can get back into my routine.