Prototyping policy 📝
I joined Made Tech this week and jumped straight into working with Defra, on their Sustainable Farming Initiative. It's a super cool project which rewards farmers for adopting sustainable practices that enrich the quality of their land. If it’s done right, it could be a win for people and the planet, which is exciting to be a part of.
It's a new service and makes me realise that for quite a long time I've been working on existing products and services, where policy is a handy (or frustrating) design constraint. In this project the ink on the policies is still wet, and prototyping is a way to not just test possible user journeys, but the policy that underpins it. It's going to be really interesting to prototype the policy as a digital service, and create a bit of a feedback loop from users to the policy makers as a result. I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.
Starting something fresh 🍃
I'm a bit of a magpie, constantly scanning the world for shiny new hobbies, projects, places and opportunities. For that reason, every few months I find myself with a new hobby, exercise routine or cooking fad, the latter of which has resulted in shelves of barely touched spices… Sichuan pepper anyone?
Sometimes I feel a bit down looking at the lightly touched craft materials gathering dust, or the kettle bells that I should probably sell on Ebay. In one of those moments, an old colleague, who’d been there themselves cheered me up with a video all about a certain group of people called ‘scanners’. A type of person who is constantly finding new things in the world to be interested in, and finding it hard to settle in just one place. If that sounds like you, I'd give it a watch, it's comforting.
There are a lot of sad scanners in the world, but I’d recommend finding a job that allows you to regularly dive deep in brand new material, such as farming and healthy soils!
The energy sap of bad tech 💻
I don't know about you, but every time I've started a new job there is always something broken with the tech that stops you from hitting the ground running. The laptop doesn't arrive, you can't log in to your email, your email address has your name wrong, you have to learn how to use MS Teams... the list could go on. That didn't happen this week, it's made a huge difference and my brain is happy. My laptop was delivered a week in advance! Shout out to Cam, Vikki and co.
That’s all folks, have a goat weekend!