March 25th, 2022

In the spirit of transparency and candour, Kevin and Jill publish weeknotes reflecting on the what and why for their team.

Kevin’s notes

I’m going to take a break from the weekly update format to do a longer (in-flight) meditation on the role and utility of design artefacts in service transformation and delivery.

Background: with my part-time involvement in the CleanBC suite of initiatives and a high velocity to the work, it’s been challenging to structure the kind of process rigour and critique I believe necessary for quality, reflective design. Specifically, the teams have been developing personas and a journey map for one of the services, and I’m still unsure exactly why.

Caveat: it could be the fragmentation of my attention across all our ENV projects that’s entirely the root of this blindspot for me. The following is not an indictment of the team’s motives or experience producing these artefacts as much it’s an attempt for me to articulate my internal conversation from this past week and rationalize these design touchpoints within our process.

As a starting point, I’m methods and tools agnostic as a designer. This likely stems from me being not actually very good at any one specific area of practice and more keenly interested in the strategic/small-p political challenges of design. However, I’m adamant that in our complex operational environments context is everything, and paint-by-numbers processes are rarely fit for purpose. It’s fair to say design has been overpackaged as processes and patterns that are unlikely to adequately address situational nuance. This is the reductive methodification of design that seasoned practitioners — who’ve delivered these methods to crickets from the business, or questioned their process impacts in hindsight— are known to bemoan.

So we must ask ourselves, time and again: what value does this method and artefact create in our process? Why should we even make the thing? The critical outcome to avoid is these outputs existing as their own, isolated deliverables, decoupled from the end-user experience of the service through delivery and continuous improvement. Questions we should consider before commencing:

• What does this enable for downstream service value? Is it actually the tool we need in our synthesis? And if the artefacts are created by only part of the team, is there truly a common understanding enabled through the process? Or do the generative learnings stay with the creator, inhibiting/siloing the intended shared value?
• How is it usable by the team that will own, maintain, and improve the service? Is it what they need? Have we worked with them to understand how they most usefully create and leverage their key end-user insights? How might our process adapt if required?
• Is the juice worth the squeeze? Or could we better allocate the time and resources to prototyping/testing with end users? Could we be doing a better job at bringing the service owners along in the process, socializing and embedding knowledge, rather than documenting? Maps are not inherently more ‘usable’ or engaging than a Word doc, depending on audience.
• Should we be approaching this with a lighter touch and lower fidelity, cognizant they may only exist for a moment in time, transitory to catalyze iteration towards delivery? How might these ‘living’ artefacts be useful for everyone?

I have absolutely seen the value of standardized design artefacts as enablers and sources of truth, and I don’t intend the above to paint me as dismissive of the tried-and-true methods of our craft. But we only benefit from the collective up-front rationalization of our efforts — again, why? We can borrow from Scrum methodology here with the 5 Why’s technique to challenge our habitual thinking and ensure our process is defensible in its utility, efficacy, and impacts.

Critical reflection enables us to use what we’ve learned previously to inform future action and evaluate the implications of our doing. It helps us avoid the automatic replication of past process by interrogating its relevance to the present. The task for design leaders is to hold space for this team reflection, to provide a framework, and to make it safe, consensus-driven, and action-orieted. Otherwise we risk being actors in design theatre, running our lines without knowing their meaning.

This week in tabs

• Move fast, stay safe: A strategy for agile teams in enterprise orgs. Without a doubt the best, most candid piece on public sector digital delivery I’ve read this year. Stop what you’re doing and read this right now.
• When it comes to social issues, tech companies are choosing the easy way out. An op-ed By Chris Govias from Domain7. Exerpt:

Silicon Valley refusing to do the hard work shouldn’t be such a surprise; after all, this is a tried and true operating model for them. You can avoid a lot of difficult work — say, untangling municipal laws and federal regulations while ignoring consequences on human labour and institutions — if you just call yourself a disrupter and skirt the legalities that don’t suit you.

• The Death of Process: To write great policies, arm those in the future who will kill your darlings by the inimitable Marianne Bellotti. I love a good piece of critical wonkism. Thanks for the tip Jill!
• How is the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic affecting digital directions for governments across the globe? A panel recording from the ACM Web Science conference, featuring Gordon Ross of OXD.
• And revisiting this excellent piece on strategic design from Brian Boyer from the Urban Technology program at the University of Michigan. If time is a dictator, interactions are an insurgency, services are a battle, and strategy is the revolution.

I spent last weekend in Bellingham racing my first ultra of the season. But honestly, the highlight was a visit to the incredible Henderson Books — we left with a heavy load, nothing but the highest recommendation for bibliophiles who find themselves in the area.

Truly, book heaven.

Jill’s notes

So first off. Mic drop to Kevin.

My week was simple. We proved our value with a camping release that didn’t result in news media about the tech. Instead, focus on the inventory. Heck yes, I support more camping inventory and dedicated lands for BC Parks!

In the gaps, many a meeting about the process, connection, and the day-to-day of the public service. If you are still reading do me a favour. Take Kevin’s recommendations seriously AND, read Move fast, stay safe. Report back.

It was a good week, see you next.