It’s been a busy one this week, so gonna [try] keep things short and sweet 🍭
All aboard 🚂
With 20 or so other new joiners, this week I’ve been doing onboarding. Brilliantly coordinated by Vikki, Cam and Ciara, it is a week for new people to get a shared understanding of Made Tech, its work and how it does it.
Highlights for me:
Pretty much the first session was about giving and receiving feedback - really set the tone for the week and work culture to expect
Two sessions on building technical architectures that support changing user needs and the real messiness of people’s lives
It’s got me thinking about how best to introduce user-centred design, discoveries and alphas as part of onboarding.
Bill shock 🧾
9 months after moving in and one month after moving out, we got our first energy bill. £559.46 in all. While I’d been chasing the energy company for months and expected a big bill, it was still a shock. I’m really lucky to have stable employment and income that’s more than the ever-growing cost of living. This common situation must be unbelievably stressful for people less fortunate than me.
A ray of relief in all this was caseworkers. Every time I spoke to someone from the energy company, they were patient, polite and even suggested hacks to help me. It’s amazing how caseworkers can make cold, rigid services more humane.
Working backwards 🔙
Next week we have our first full hiring interviews. As such, we’ve done the first iteration of our interview discussion guides. Rather than jumping straight to writing questions (something I’ve done before 😬) we worked backwards in designing the interview guides:
Role responsibilities → What we need to learn → Interview questions
Check out this guide for our Designer interviews - feedback most welcome. Lee is sharing these questions with people ahead of their interviews. We lifted a learning of Gaz Aston at dxw.
More hands-on 🛠️
This newsletter has focussed so far on design operations and management. I’m gonna start sharing more about the hands-on research and design Made Tech teams are doing. And soon new teammates will be taking turns with me to write these posts.