Weeknote 9: Springtime for my calendar

A late edition again this week. I didn't feel like opening the laptop after work yesterday so I'm currently wrapped in a blanket on my sofa with a BFI documentary about the miner's strike on in the background. Ideal conditions for weeknote writing.

Owen the link text writer

The main thing I've been focusing on this week is drafting changes to our link text following the audit last cycle. Cal's been thinking a lot about the process of this so that all 5 of us on the squad can get involved but in the meantime I've been seeing if I can both get some of the easier improvements done and out and also help Cal doing some early drafting of improved link text. It's been a real lean towards content design over my normal specialism (which by pure chance your man Steve blogged about last week) which has been enlightening and a bit fun. Mostly though it's been a reminder that content design is no joke. The content folks reading this may be rolling their eyes I realise.

I've been running into interesting challenges with trying to make some of these links work in and out of their contexts. For example, a rule we established early on was that when referring to elements of our library we sentence case them and specify what they are in the link text. So for links to our Addresses pattern, 'addresses' should become 'Addresses pattern'. However we don't always refer to our patterns as individual 'classes'. Sometimes we refer to the Addresses pattern as the act of collecting addresses ('asking users for addresses'). Sometimes it's the data we're gathering ('your user's addresses'). Do we try to shoehorn in the 'pattern' suffix every time? Is it contextual, even if it's not totally consistent?

I've spoken to Cal and other content folks before about how they have the hardest job in stakeholder work because anyone who can read reckons they can understand and write content. Wrong. You don't know guff. This is your reminder to give the content people around you the respect they deserve. If I was a more brash and tactless individual I might make a comment about how much content people get paid in comparison to their fellow specialisms, but obviously I have no opinions about that.

Spelling out our search results

The secondary achievement has been making a start on improving our search results as they're displayed in our site search. This has mainly been Hazal taking the outcomes of the design workshop a few weeks ago and showing us the sketches she took from them.

All the ideas have legs but the thing we've picked essentially makes the metadata associated with search results more verbose. I'm a big fan of it. It makes where a given result lives very clear. Currently we try to finesse this a bit but these new designs spell it out and make conveyance and maintenance loads easier.

This work has shone a light on our slightly dodgy information architecture. We include pages and individual headings on pages in search results and it's tricky to differentiate between them. The ideal is if we had pages for each searchable thing but there isn't always a suitable place to put those pages. On top of that, managing search on a static site is tricky. You can't really have a separate search page because it can't be built, unless you want to build it client side or use a third party search product, which is less than ideal for us. So it's always going ot be an enhancement. Therefore there's always going to be a ceiling to how much we can improve it. I'd like to revisit the site info arch again with a willingness to unravel it and restitch it.

A little reflection on the sanctity of my calendar

Over the past few months, my calendar has been pretty barren which has been quite a privilege. I described it to Cal on Thursday as a 'meeting winter'. Recently it's started to fill out again.

I've been quite vocal to my team about needing long stretches of uninterrupted time to get things done and avoiding most meetings if I can help it. Given the 'power' of leading the DAC audit work, I tried to maintain that for myself, at the expense of the squad's productivity. I was talking to Anika about it yesterday and she reminded me about maker's time vs manager's time. I know myself and how much I resonate with maker's time. At the same time, depending on the meeting, it can be extremely useful to get together and talk through stuff synchronously.

I'm going to try and be more thorough about asking for clearer aims for meetings, as opposed to the 'it will emerge if we talk about it' approach to progressing work. I appreciate that doesn't work for everyone and some folks do need synchronised communication in order to get their thoughts together, but there's a balance to be struck around what works for me and what works for others.

Quick non-work report

It's been a decent week. My usual 2 classes of Jiu Jitsu and many many cups of coffee.

I've been thinking in BJJ this week about my guard and how, even though I've got great big long legs, I'm not as good at stopping people just sprinting round to my side. I need to work on my defense there because if I can keep up with folks trying to get around me the traditional way, I'll be able to knock them off their feet.

I had a nice meal with the wife and some mates at the excellent Filó in Islington. I've mentioned in passing on here that my wife's from Brazil and we occasionally suss out local Brazilian spots to see how they measure up. The data is mostly negative in London, I'm afraid. However Filó know what they're doing. If you're in Islington and want to get some good, proper Brazilian food, pop by.

I also watched the most recent season of Demon Slayer. Not a lot to say. A very short filler season where naff all happens. The animation is still exceptional and that's all there really is to it. It's a little freeing if you accept that. I am quite excited about the Infinity Castle films that are coming next which looks like it's just going to be a bunch of big fights, which in my opinion is where Demon Slayer excels.