In the spirit of upskilling myself, the start of a new year (yes, cliché I know) and wanting to ‘put myself out there more’, I’m going to give the ‘week notes’ thing a go. All the cool and interesting people I’ve had the pleasure of working with do them, so why not take a leaf out of their book, and give it a whirl. I don’t consider myself to be cool, or interesting really - I’m not really sure what to write about. Even if my audience is strictly close family and 1 or 2 friends, it’ll upskill my ability to write, my confidence (by way of posting whatever rubbish I can think of writing that week, even if it is just my opinion on whatever soap is on in the background...) and create a good habit which hopefully, I can stick to. 🤷

I’m not a very habitual person. I pick habits up and drop them quite quickly and can never really settle on the rhythm of doing something, at the same time, for a long period of time. I like jumping between different interests, exploring and learning about things. Having said that, I am on a 51-day steak of Duolingo, having just won the Emerald trophy this week, as part of my personal goal to learn fluent Welsh (and to avoid Duo the owl turning up to my house and giving me a hiding 😓) – I really wish I’d paid more attention to this particular subject in school! I’m also 33 days strong on Mimo, a coding platform, very similar to Duolingo, but for computer languages instead. 🤖 Part of another goal to get more proficient in the dark arts of CSS, JS, Python, and more.

I’m not really sure what format to share these on, it’ll probably be my website. I’m well aware that the ramblings of me trying to string a few paragraphs together about what I’ve learnt that week, could kill off a couple of connections. I suppose that’s all part of the fun though, right? 😅

The return-to-work last week meant a continuation of running design workshops and research sessions to understand user needs and requirements. One of the many outputs from these are journey maps, which I’ve always liked doing. I enjoy the challenge of taking complex user journeys, and mapping out  the end-to-end processes as clearly as possible. Creating good looking diagrams whilst conveying the point clearly can be challenging. Content, audience, complexity, clarity, all play a part in crafting a nice looking visual. I much prefer these to user stories, although I can do them, it feels like an exercise in separating grains of sand. Going into the granular details for each interaction, whilst incredibly useful, is something I find daunting to get stuck into – when the ball gets rolling it's not too bad.

Outside of work I’ve been playing with CAD again and have been creating a few things here and there for personal projects where I can. Luckily, I’m not stepping back into AutoDesk Alias and A Class Surfacing. Instead, the slightly more forgiving and open-source Blender software. I’m enjoying it. CAD was always my favourite part of the product design process so it’s nice to pick it back up again as a passion project when I’ve got 5 minutes, and I’m not learning different languages.

I’ve really enjoyed the breakdown of ‘watching, learning and reading’ from a former colleagues’ week notes structure. So I’m shamelessly going to copy it – thanks Martin. 🙈

Watching 📺

Currently Paddington Bear. Not my first choice but my daughter seems to like it - for about 5 minutes. When my wife and I can, we’ve been enjoying SAS Who Dares Wins on BBC. I watched the first season towards the end of last year and was hooked. It’s gritty, shocking, and brilliant. The second season has been released on iPlayer and I’d highly recommend it if that’s your sort of thing. We’ve also been making our way through the Marvel timeline, TV series and all - only the more recent ones though, Punisher and Dare Devil is probably not suitable for my stepson. We’ve finished Wakanda Forever and move on to Ant-Man Quantamania. It starts to get exciting now because whilst we’re taking him on the Marvel cinematic journey, my wife and I haven’t watched the most recent TV Series or movies. Deadpool and the Wolverine being the exception.

Listening 📻

I’ve not long finished an audio book by Luiz Elizondo, and prior to that an autobiography of Michael Bisping. Both insightful and interesting listen, for very different reasons. 👽🥷Other than that I’ve been enjoying nostalgic Nu Metal and have had Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory on repeat the last few weeks. One of the many albums I had the pleasure of growing up listening to.

Reading 📖

Not much honestly. I have been very slowly making my way through SAS Band of Brothers and Great Escapes by Damien Lewis. I’ve always had an interest in Military, hence the obvious theme. Although, rather surprisingly I haven’t watched Band of Brothers, it’s on the list.