Shorter work week for me as I went to Falmouth on Friday for a weekend away with my girlfriend and some friends. We packed so much into our one full day there including chips by the harbour, a two-hour cabin boat ride up Carrick Roads river, rounders on the beach and ended with karaoke and clubbing at Mangos (I’ve never felt so old).
Also the walk back to the AirBnB (I know, I’m sorry and not proud of it) was up such a godforsaken hill that I’d closed half my Apple watch exercise ring by 2am.
This was about halfway up. Has anyone seen John Wick 4?
I finalised the date for the in-team content design training, which I’m nervous about but looking forward to.
I actually put my head down and created a draft roadmap and future plan for content design, which has given me such a better idea of how I’m going to prioritise. I also treated myself to some new stationery, including this Muji notebook which I love.
I wrote a really long email on Thursday that I think was quite impactful and I’m hoping that it’ll fix some issues that I’ve been having on creating a user survey for fund applicants (see What could have gone better).
Also really enjoying the Southbank booking journey redesign work I’m doing with a great and effective Product Manager, Joe and our always extraordinary UX designer, Anna.
Couldn’t quite pin a meeting down with everyone needed for a piece of work related to fund guideline user survey, so decided to try and hash it out over email. Think this will be a bit more fiddly and take a bit more time but it will be worth it in the end.
I’ve volunteered to help a London-based charity with their website and was added to a WhatsApp chat last week to discuss what needs to happen. The only way I can describe their attitude towards their users is, hostile. The last message I sent was just me informing them that the problem isn’t their users, it’s their content. They haven’t responded yet.
Really interesting article on what retail and experience design might look like in 2024. I was especially interested in what Ruud Belman thought about the ‘coming-of-age’ of Gen Z and [their preferences for IRL experiences to ‘escape’ the screen](https://www.designweek.co.uk/issues/18-december-22-december-2023/retail-experience-design-2024/#:~:text=And while the importance of IRL retail experiences had dropped for Millennials%2C GenZ is turning to brick and mortar as an escape from their continuous online presence.).
Would love to get to this End of History photo exhibition - there’s a nice article in Tribune about it.
Very interesting article on National Geographic’s redesign and the bridging of print heritage and digital experience.
Read about the death threats sent to a designer who dared to redesign the logo for the Portuguese government. The design was a practical one, as ‘the old logo replicated many of the intricate graphics shown on the national flag, rendering it visually confusing when shrunk down for online formats’. It reminded me of the furor around the St. George’s Cross on the new England kit.
Kath and Kim - Comfort show