Weeknotes 25 August, 2023

So, this week has been a good ‘un. Why? I’ll break it down…

Monday

With the product manager, engineers, and fellow designers we reviewed the end-to-end journey of a project. It was a great reflection exercise. Screen by screen we looked at what we had designed and what went live. And each discipline had the space to give feedback. We don’t do this enough so I’m going to advocate for repeating this process with other projects.

I finished off some 2 factor authentication content. I also ran our usual bi-weekly content planning. Our content team is small, but our collective team is big. In the interest of time and efficiency, Content and UI syphon off from the main planning and estimation to run their own. We then join the rest of our design and research in their P&E to give support. We also give a run through of what our respective teams will be working on.

Tuesday

Our full-team bi-weekly planning and estimation session. Plus, some pair writing, and a meeting with Tomer, CEO and Co-Founder of Frontitude.

I’m keen to try out Frontitude and see how it fairs against Ditto Words as a single source of truth for copy. For whatever reason, the UI of Frontitude resonates better with me. Of course, that’s not a reason to switch. I need to learn more about what Ditto Words can do for us. And, I’m going to explore how we might be able to do more with Phrase, the tool we use for localisation. Maybe that can be The Place for copy.

Wednesday

I spent some time trialling out the UX Writing Assistant from Frontitude. It’s free, for now, and it’s available for Figma as a plug in. The assistant uses AI to rewrite any copy you’re stuck on. You can select what tone you want. I’ve been testing out ‘Crisp’. While I’m still not sure what “crisp” language looks like, I do really like what the plug in does. I am a little skeptical of who decides what constitutes as “enthusiastic”, “engaging” etc. That feels like a hard thing to standardise. And that’s also kinda a good example of why we’ll always need humans to vet AI.

Thursday:

I went to a lunch and learn session at co-working space Platform9. Laura Phelan, a therapeutic coach and speaker, led an hour about unleashing our inner CEO. She also prompted conversation on how ‘imposter syndrome’ squash us from being badasses. And, importantly, how to counter it.

The hour was a blend of sharing stories, CBT-inspired tools, and visualisation. Laura helped us, a group of around 12-ish women, push our shoulders back, stand tall, and take up the space we were born to own. It was humbling to hear so many of us shared the same fabricated beliefs that can hold us back. And refreshing to learn practical ways to tell them to jog the f*&k on.

Friday

I started the day sweating my ass off at Box and Lift – a mixture of boxing, circuit training, and weights. Quick shower and breakfast then it was on to our weekly Coffee and a Chat call. This week was a cracker.

We started off by sharing experiences of having kids. Then, strayed from there into AI and how in 15 years we’ll all be out of work and hanging out on the beach. Somehow, we took a detour into the AI-prompted actor strike in the US. (This prompted me to ask ChatGPT to write a film based on design and superheroes. I know, wrong really, given the strike). Back to being beach bums! We discussed how the government will not allow AI to turn us into coastal loafers as we fund the gov.

The chat drew to a close on the subject of how Greggs the bakers outnumbers the amount of Greggs (people) in the UK. Someone mentioned some Greggs clothing spotted at a festival. I mentioned the Lidl fits I’d seen on social media, and a colleague shared his well-resisted urge to buy a B&M Stores logo knitted sweater just for laffs. Quite the journey, for only 30 mins.