Reading Time: 4 minutes I’ve left my last role at the end of July, and since then, I’ve had what some would call a ‘career gap’, or if you are a bit more positive a ‘career break’. I would call it ‘a pause’. This post is about what I’ve been up to and why… Read More »Career gap / break / pause
Reading Time: 3 minutes I did yes! But what I do during my time off is usually not what others would consider nice or fun, like spending most of my day re-doing my professional journey as a tube map. Mondays I have not been in a office for a long time now, but still… Read More »Did you have a nice weekend?
Reading Time: 8 minutes This is not a post about Agile ways of working. The title could have been: ‘Oops I did it again’: because yes, I recently resigned. again. This post is about my relationship to work and might be of interest to you if you are considering different ways of working. What… Read More »Ways of working
Reading Time: 3 minutes I’m in this nice phase where I’ve left a role and haven’t started the next one yet. My old laptop is packed, waiting to be picked up by a courier and the new one will arrive this week. At this point in time, I don’t have to worry about the… Read More »In between
Reading Time: 5 minutes I had an end of year review at work yesterday which prompted me to think back about my professional journey. 10 years ago I wasn’t in a good place. I had worked hard to build up my classes where I was teaching French to various groups. I was self-employed but… Read More »Looking back
There is a lot of recruitment going on at the moment for the Public Sector: Service Designers, User Researchers, Content Designers and Interaction Designers.
This is good! But they are struggling to get people because they want candidates with previous experience in the government. Or what recruiters and hiring managers often call “GDS experience” when in fact what they mean is more like “experience of the Service Toolkit“.
Read More »How to start working for the government and the public sectorLooking at job ads, your value is usually judged by number of years on the job + tools you know and have experience with, but really… it should not be.
A green doughnut started a big reflection this morning. This wasn’t on my to do list for today.
Lately, I’m doing a lot outside work, all super interesting but all competing for my time. A little bit of all this has always been there but it’s growing a lot lately.
Last month, I was involved in a User Research session for the GDS team – as a participant. Since 2017, I’ve observed, facilitated or took notes in many UR sessions, but it was my first time as a participant. It was a bit strange to be on the other side. This made me reflect and realise how important the GDS has been in my career journey.
Read More »What I’ve learnt from GDS (Government Digital Service)- and what you could take from it tooI’ve never been too sure about what I wanted to do “when I’m older”.
I’ve worked in banks, in an airport, in a research lab, in schools, in a shop counting money with a “gangster style” machine, in video games (testing and support), teaching French to kids, to adults, and worked as a software developer. After all these years, I’ve finally got the job that’s the best fit for me: Service Designer.
Read More »When I’m older, I want to be a Service Designer — says no one ever