Weeknotes 17 October, 2025

I missed Weeknotes last week so here’s a bumper edition covering the last 2 weeks.

So what’s been going on?

Presenting in Paris

A few of us travelled to our office in France to share two projects we’re working on. Both were well recieved. We also had the priviliege of spending time with some of our users and gathering their feedback on the work so far. This was so valuable as we can now fine-tune further with their needs in mind.

Pausing to reframe conversations
I consider how I position things a lot, and have been working on doing this more. Here are a couple of examples of where I’m including risk and impact in my follow ups (rather than task chasing).

1. Giving feedback on process. On one of the projects we presented in Paris, the process hasn’t been optimum and it’s meant a lot of back and forth on content as well as inefficient production loops for other teams. Here’s an example (one of a few) where I’ve raised this in a way that communicates the risk and impact.

“I know the process hasn’t felt totally smooth for any of us, so let’s see how we can make it work better together. Ideally, we’d have the strategy confirmed upfront, before the content is created. That way, we’re all clear on scope and can avoid unnessary back and forth or time spent reworking things. We’ve all invested a lot of time on this project so far, so it’d be great to find a more efficicent way forward for future rounds.”

I’ve also spotted an opportunity here: to pro-actively drive and document the stategy for work like this. This outcome of this means that a clearer “brief” for content designers before work begins. A pinch work in the beginning, yes, but less rounds of revisions later.

2. On version control. (Okay, this one is kinda process too).

“Thanks for sharing the designs. I had a look through the file to mock up both versions, but I couldn’t find any screens with buttons. I may be missing some content – are we moving ahead with the three-button approach? From a user perspective feel a bit amgibious without the noun. I know we’ve dropped the noun other parts of the product, but I want to make sure the choice here is intentional and clear.”

Extra context: we have a verb + noun pattern for button copy. While we do need to drop the noun sometimes, it’s the exception rather than the rule.

Now on to some reflection for this week

🌟 Highlights

• I completed the Dext U certifiication, designed for our users. I realised how well I know our product – a lot better than I acknowledged.
• A designer asked me to review a nice little piece of content. It was missing our tone a bit, and if the designer had used the prompts in our library, it would have been closer. I fed this back, sharing the prompts (and library) so they can make these easy tweaks themselves.

🌧 Lowlights

• Some crappy family news has been upsetting. Yet, I’ve taken time to process it and figure out how to move forward. I’m already on the up.

🙏 Gratitude

• Shoutout to my team for picking up a meeting I dropped out of due to the lowlight above.

🎯 Focus for next week

… Mobile stuff for our payments project.
… Synthesizing and sharing terminology test results.
… Making space for some focus time on my goals.