Weeknote 3: finding a pattern

I’ve figured out that my weeks are like sandwiches. Mondays and Fridays are quiet, while Tuesdays to Thursdays are back to back meetings. With a sample of 3 weeks, is it really a work pattern or a short term trend? That question lingered as I was drawn into a couple of conversations about service patterns. I’ve always been a bit suspicious of any desire to organise and categorise just like I’m suspicious of ‘one size fits all’ t-shirts. More often than not, bespoke experiences (or fitted garments) take more time but lead to longer lasting products.

It would be easy to take the 6 screening programmes (breast, lung, bowel, cervical, prostate cancer screening as well as diabetic eye screening) and say they all take similar approaches. They’re all about selecting people, notifying them they’re due for a test, sending them results. Sure. That sounds reasonable. But you take one step closer to the problem and you quickly encounter local constraints: the age of that screening service and associated tech stack, where a test is conducted (on the phone, in a mobile clinic, in a hospital, somewhere else) how those test sites operate and their related tech stack and finally whatever data you have and haven’t shared yet. With so many different conditions, what would a pattern do? How might it help? Or do we mostly need teams to share their lessons and approaches in a way that isn’t too superficial and leads to pairing up and mentorship across projects? I will stay with the trouble and try to find out.

Lastly, as I keep reading weeknotes and sit in check-ins, the overarching pattern that emerges is that UCD is a thin wedge between staff and the general public. Without design, things would largely continue to happen, people would just spend more time with bits of paper and on the phone. So if we’re going to show up and disrupt their ways of working, we better make a great impression.