Professional development

How to start working for the government and the public sector

Reading Time: 4 minutes

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“.

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How to grow as a designer?

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Looking 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.

collage with UX Glasgow logo, photo of piles of book, sharpies, people chatting during a meet up, screenshot of a confirmation of order on Eventbrite, my journey professional journey as a tubemap and a certificate from the Interaction Design Foundation
My own journey, meet-ups, various events, books and online courses – photo from UX Glasgow meet-up session pre-covid
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Improving digital skills – a tool using the GOV.UK prototype kit – part 2

Reading Time: 13 minutes

The idea: developing a website where people can fill in forms which look like the real ones but simplified to learn and become more confident. This is Jumana Almusawi‘s idea: she contacted me about it back in February on LinkedIn.

A lot has happen since my last blog post about this. Work is nearly completed and we tested with learners on Zoom recently.

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Life outside work

Reading Time: 5 minutes

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.

cork board with images of various meetups, associations, logos of twitter, Zoom, Slack, a coronavius photo, plants, and other illustrations of my activities links by red lines going to pins on the photo
Can’t credit all. The green doughtnut is by Kate Raworth, the practitioner stories illustration is by Angela F. Orviz, most photos from Twitter and collage made with Miro.
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Liberating Structures

Reading Time: 9 minutes

This week, I attended a participative event to explore how Liberating Structures can shape Scottish public service change work. It was a really good day, great atmosphere, very relax yet productive. Most participants had been experimenting with Liberating Structures in their work and could share this experience, but it was also about reflecting, as a facilitator, how it can feel for the group we are using it with, especially when they are new to it.

people in the room placed at different areas and facing different directions
Photo from David Heath on Twitter
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What I’ve learnt from GDS (Government Digital Service)- and what you could take from it too

Reading Time: 5 minutes

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.

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When I’m older, I want to be a Service Designer — says no one ever

Reading Time: 6 minutes

I’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.

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