Last week’s notes (a little late, but here they are):

• The first week of February saw the start of a new discovery under the Future Farming and Countryside Programme umbrella. Despite my and other people’s efforts to avoid it, it did feel like jumping from one moving train to another.
• A weekend isn’t long enough to decompress after an intensive final few weeks wrapping up the old service for a future team. And Monday to Wednesday saw us immersed in all things new service, albeit with some of the same team members (a topic I want to return to).
• It was a good immersion, helpfully facilitated by one of our user-centred design colleagues.
• We also had a visit from a researcher and designer on a “sister service” which helped fill in more gaps in our understanding. We plan to work very closely together.
• Our discovery work covers England, so I went to Stanford’s to pick up a map of the UK for us to plot out our stakeholders on. I was just about to pay when there was a power cut across the centre of Bristol, which put paid to that plan temporarily. I had to got back the next day to pick it up.
• During the week I also put the finishing touches to the video I directed and edited. It’s every member of the previous team (as it was when we finished) talking through what they did, how they did it, and who with. At a Defra Bristol Design Community of Practice meet up on Thursday I was able to show some highlights and talk a bit about the ‘wrapping up’ experience for me and team.
• I took the Friday off from work completely, as last week I hit a milestone birthday which I wanted to celebrate with my family. Meditation, run, breakfast with the kids before they went to school, then massage, lunch at Marmo and after some walking, lots of sushi for supper. Perfect!
• Perhaps the significant birthday has encouraged me to be reflective, but I also took the opportunity to revisit, dust off and restart some side projects I’ve been talking about for a while. More on those soon 🙂 
• Oh and I also wrote a couple more blog posts, one of which – about storm names – I published on Monday!