Jon is a UCD Principal at Made Tech’s London office.
Space is good. We all want more of it: space to explore, to spread out, to think. In the summer of 2019, I brought a shed that was too large for our tiny garden. Maybe calling it a "shed" is unfair; then again, referring to the "log cabin" seems flamboyant. Either way, it's a place where I can work in a way that gives me room for both my jobs of designing stuff and being a dad.
(Now, watch, this is an awesome segue.) Recently, I've been thinking about how to make space for good design.
The service standard asks us to use agile ways of working. The discovery phase gives us space to understand our users and their problems. Next, in alpha, we test ideas for solutions. In beta, the die is cast; you've now totally de-risked what you're building, right?
Now we're into agile proper. The build process has begun, and you must do design within this framework. By and large, this works; you've answered the big questions in discovery and alpha. All that's left to do is mould the service into its final form. Luckily this allows us to feed the agile machine with bite-sized chunks.
But what if you need to dedicate space to answer a more significant question? How do you carve out time for discovery in beta? Jon Aizlewood wrote about agile vs design. Therein is some good thinking about blending the sometimes waterfall nature of solving complex problems with the piecemeal nature of agile delivery.
In my project for DLUHC, we passed our alpha assessment and moved into beta. So we've been trying to find time to do discovery-type things. Slowly, we're figuring out how to balance solving more extensive problems alongside feeding delivery. Good relationships between the UCD and development teams have been vital. While testing risky stuff in the prototype, we've established enough common patterns to push less complex things to development and test with users in the service.
There's still more to do in the space of, well, making space. Last week I joined Made Tech full time as a design principle. It's early days, but the space thing feels like it might become a theme. Anyway, I'm off back to my shed with a cup of tea and a Wagon Wheel. Well, alright, it's the Aldi knock-off one, but I defy you to tell the difference.
Always had either a Wagon Wheel or Tunnocks Caramel Wafer in my lunchbox, in the 80s