2 years ago I started my first day working at the Department for Work and Pensions. It’s been a wild ride with no sign it’s slowing down.
I’m enjoying every minute.
For the first 10 days of my time in the department, I made a point of posting some thoughts and observations in the form of a tweet per day. I kept them and thought this was a better time than any to take a look back.
Day 1: 1st Day was great, topped off by catching up with @csswizardry over Thai food.
Day 2: 2nd day at @DigitalDWP, there’s a tremendous amount of people that really care and strive to make a real difference for users.
Day 3: There are no ego’s in Government Design teams, everyone cares and shares. #ofthegovernment
Day 4: The need to make Gov Services better doesn’t stop with Designers. User Researchers, Product Owners, FED’s and more work in cohesion.
Day 5: Proud of working as part of a multidisciplinary team who aren’t just passionate but they’re emotionally invested. #ofthegovernment
Day 6: Iterate. #ofthegovernment
Day 7: You can’t set an assumption in stone unless you’ve done your research on it. It’s also ok to have assumptions.
Day 8: It’s not just your team and service, Government Digital teams communicate A LOT to build a better digital service. #ofthegovernment
Day 9: No matter how simple *you* think something is, user research will always inform you of a reality. #ofthegovernment
Day 10: Proper design challenges, stuff that matters. #ofthegovernment
To sum it up
Day 10 sums it all up. I’m two years in and we still have ‘proper’ design challenges on ‘stuff’ that really matters. More now than ever.
There’s a lot of hard work ahead of us. We’re only just getting started.