Weeknotes 1 December, 2023

I’ve got today off again. Woohoo! I had some holiday to use up so have random days off before Christmas. This is the second Friday I’ve had off in a row – and I’m loving it. It’s so nice to have time to do as I please. No plan, no rushing. Instead, I’m enjoying every day stuff like walking the dog and heading to the gym for a class. My running’s coming on great too and I’m feeling the fittest I have in some time. I’ve two final runs left of Couch to 5K. I recommend you try it – I’ve loved it.

Looking back on the week it’s gone a bit like this…

Launching a pilot of a new content tool. When I’ve tried out prospective tools in the past it’s been more of a case of doing a free trial and that’s about it.

This time, I’ve set KPIs, involved colleagues, created tasks and a way to collect feedback. I’ve written a comms plan and put in interviews with the people helping me test the tool.

Being this organised is very satisfying. I need to remember that. I also need to remember the amount of time it took to set this up – it was more labour-intensive than I first thought. Also rewarding in setting up this pilot is that I can already spot ways to optimise future pilots.

Starting to audit and measure prompts. Trisha Causley, Content Design Lead at Shopify, spoke about this this year at Button. Trisha shared easy ways to analyse prompts and communicate what ‘good’ can look like. I’ve written a ton of prompts recently. I know they’re of varying quality and could do with improvements in their consistency. I’m going try out Trisha’s methods in our next sprint.

Tinkering around with alerts and notifications. Less tinkering really. More making sure everything’s clear, consistent and easy for users to action.

Drafting email copy. For improvements to logging in to our product. This has been simple, nice and straightforward copy to write.

There was more (there’s always more), though these are the things that are top of mind. I’m going to go back to enjoying my day off and put my feet up. Have a lovely, wintery weekend.