My turn to write the newsletter this week. I’ve enjoyed having Dawn, Spyri and Mark bringing their voices here. And with more new UCD people still to come.
One every week 🥐
By the end of July, we’ll have eight permanent user researchers and designers at Made Tech. That’s an average of a new UCD person every week. The result of some open and thoughtful scheming with Luke, Lee and others.
Interviews, however friendly, are a bit formal. So it’s been especially nice getting to know our new people in one-to-ones and weekly rituals like our weekly community catch-up. All be it a bit scary line managing seven people while more senior people settle in. I’m trying to overcome that feeling by being organised and making lists.
I’ve been referring to the first user researchers and designers we’ve hired as our “UCD starter culture”. The intention they’ll spread good research and design habits in teams, Made Tech and client organisations. That, in turn, will reduce risks to deliver good public services.
New people are joining client work, so this plan has started. Things can, and will somehow, not go to plan, but it feels like we’re making progress.
Planning future tides 🌊
Even before joining, UCD people have been bagsied by teams for client work. It’s a satisfying feeling matching the supply of new people with the demand of new client work. In fact, demand might outstrip supply, so I need to focus again on hiring.
It’s difficult to be reactive with hiring. It takes time to source good people, fairly assess their skills, convince them to join, wait as they finish their old jobs and onboard them ready for client work. Equally predicting future client demand is hard too.
All this means we need to do some educated guesswork. About the number and skills of the UCD people we need in three, six and 12 months time. As Spyri said last week, better decisions come from mixing different information.
Planning for future tides of UCD growth, it’s all about regular conversations with people:
Hazel, Tom and Robin about the demand they see in their markets and who’s payroll UCD people will sit on
Delivery people like Laura, Laxmi, Ludivine and Grainne who get the earliest indications of new or extended work with existing clients
Salespeople such as Kirsty, Matt and Ian about likely work with new clients
Luke and Chris who track company-wide and historical demand trends
Based on this information, I’ve been working with Lee and Michael to put forward what UCD roles we should prioritise hiring next. We’ve agreed with Hazel on advertising some new UCD roles in Manchester and will do the same soon for Bristol and London.
Planning future tides is still more art than science. The main thing is we learn and adapt, then we’ll make ever more informed decisions about growing our burgeoning UCD community.
Sock store magic 🧦🔮
I recently went to Uniqlo as part of my new sock strategy - buying only one colour from now on:
Previously I would buy a full spectrum of socks, which over time has left me lots of colourful, single socks I can’t wear. A bit wasteful.
Anyhow … at Uniqlo I used a self-check, which as if by magic, automatically knew what and how many items I wanted to buy. As this short video demonstrates:
Like Vernon Dursley believing ‘there's no such thing as magic’, I did some digging to learn for myself what lay behind this self-service sorcery. Turns out Uniqlo now puts Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags in all its packaging.
Some years ago I used to do some freelance writing for a retail Internet of Things company. I remember researching and writing about RFID tags and thinking to myself the technology was overhyped.
Yet the Uniqlo RFID powered self-checkout I used last week felt genuinely useful - faster, less stressful and safer Covid wise. It’s an optimist sensation when a seeing a technology looking mature for the first time.
Growth, progression and promotions 🌰 🌱🌲
We’re gonna kick-off some user research about promotions and career progression at Made Tech. Yasemin and Laura asked me to work with them and the rest of our People Team to understand how best to support people to grow and progress their careers at Made Tech. Learning things like how people and their managers use our current career progress framework, Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).
It’s an example that user research isn’t just for informing the design of software. Policies can also benefit starting with user needs. Ultimately it’s about using user research to drive outcomes. For this bit of work, it’s informing how Made Tech can be a company people can grow with.
I’m personally really interested in what we learn through this research. We’re open about roles and salaries and I intend the same about how designers and researchers can grow at Made Tech. That’s part of making a place good people want to stay at.