Weeknote 24: Booking a haircut

April fools! I didn't write any weeknotes last week.

I had a short one last week, only 3 days with Monday and Friday off, so not loads to talk about. Plus I was away visiting my Mum on the weekend and on Friday I really just wanted to sit on the sofa and play Monster Hunter.

Generally I've been finding I've not had loads of spare energy recently, least of all for weeknote writing. I was thinking I haven't booked a haircut recently and I'm wondering if it's because I don't want to spend my lunch breaks running errands, I want to spend them switching off.

I'm wondering if I've got a blinder on if I'm working unsustainably in that just because I'm not working ungodly hours doesn't mean I'm not overworking myself. There's a lot going on right now and I still haven't cracked not trying to keep afloat of everything.

Anyway, wot Owen did in the last 2 weeks:

  • Merged a nifty feature to GOV.UK Frontend's review app allowing us to switch the rebrand feature flag on and off which I'm hoping will help us test and review stuff more easily
  • Made a start on documenting said feature
  • Helped with planning an early internal release of the rebrand for teams in GDS to make a start on updating their codebases in prep for the proper go live date
  • Helped roll out said internal release
  • Took part in planning the upcoming cycle of work, including cleaning up some old github issues
  • Started thinking about what I'll be doing this coming cycle, which is updating our page template to allow for easier rebrand updating for nunjucks users; I'm sure I'll talk about this more later
  • Helped Kat with analysing the technical responses to our UX Survey from earlier this year
  • Fell deep down a rabbit hole fixing bugs in our automated release processes that we picked up during the internal release
  • Ran some end of year performance reviews with line reports

It's not gonna be the usual big long paragraphs but I do have some usual extra thoughts.

Survey analysis

I spent a small chunk of the last two weeks helping Kat out with the technical respondents of this year's UX survey, which mostly meant interpreting the technical context of the responses and turning them into non-technical judgements. It feels like it's been ages since we put time aside for proper user analysis, especially with this rebrand project (we've tried, believe me), so it's very cool to get to do it.

Some really interesting stuff surfaced from the responses. Some notable stuff includes the number of non-technical people being asked to do the technical parts of service development and on the other end, frontend framework users complaining that GOV.UK Frontend isn't geared towards them. The Design System is in part a tool for designers but GOV.UK Frontend is a tool for developers; I don't think it's the right thing to change that. However somewhere along the way I think a game of telephone was played with department heads where they thought they didn't need to hire developers anymore. That's just not the case, at least we're not the team to facilitate that. You've gotta hire developers.

At the same time it exists in a weird space in the wider frontend meta, or rather the frontend meta is in a weird space with it's ongoing love affair with client side rendering. Client side rendering has historically not played nicely with the things we value ie: accessibility, performance and progressive enhancement so we try to discourage their use by way of a lack of attention. That doesn't mean it's not possible, especially in the modern day.

In both cases I wonder if there's something for us to do about meeting users where they are, or even just acknowledge them. Those are just 2 bits of analysis. All interesting stuff.

Sustainability wins

Wanted to add a shout out to Design System team pals Hazal and Mia for finally getting their guidance on building a sustainable service into the government design principals. Sustainability is something we should be thinking about loads more across government and I'd love for our team to spend some time thinking properly about it, especially given our position upstream of everything. This is really cool as both an affectation towards us doing more sustainability thinking and a prompt for folks in government to start on some of that work in their services.

LIFE

My little culture moment this week was going to the Soho Theatre on Monday to see Weather Girl. Really truly one of the best theatre things I've ever seen. Powerful, harrowing, funny. It's not light but it's bloody good.

Only one jiu-jitsu class this week on account of Monday evening being taken up by the theatre which I'm bothered about, but the class I did have was good. I'm a little frustrated by my club's lack of timing flexibility which makes me think maybe it's time to find a new club. I've got my eye on a one nearby. I feel a bit weird about it but theoretically more flexibility means I have fewer excuses.

Also btw, I've booked a haircut for tomorrow. Iterative progress or whatever.