January summary
Now I don’t know about you, but January felt like two halves; the slow, steady pace back into work mode…quickly followed by a realisation that everything needs to ramp up! Last month had been about scaling, sharpening, and shifting gears as we started moving heavily into our content migration and technical readiness.
Whilst this technically happened yesterday, I could not leave it out of this summary as a lot of effort went into it during last month. We’ve gone live with our final service area on public preview which is Bins, waste and recycling. It’s our second most engaged service online and moving it now allowed us to implement new features like the ‘Find a Tidy Tip’ directory.
As I try to think of what to write and share, I’m struggling where to start! Therefore, I’ve kept this summary brief as time becomes more valuable and focus tightens…
🔥 What happened
- Content migration sprints: Constant service matter expert (SME) engagement on embedding user content design (UCD) thinking + reviews/sign offs
- Comms planning: Getting the right message crafted, for the right audience on the right channel has been tricky
- From Zero to Beta: Engaging session with Sean from Annertech and Nick Hill during Open Source Week discussing all things LocalGov Drupal
🔎 What we learned
- Small changes create big clarity: Making changes on public beta and showing content type designs helped SME engagement
- K.I.S.S. it: The “one‑click return to page” feedback form approach continues to outperform our previous feedback patterns. Drop‑off is low, and comments are genuinely helpful
- Internal champions matter: Services with an active SMEs progressed faster and raised fewer blockers. This will shape how we prioritise onboarding in February and March.
🚧 What’s next…
- Content design system prep: We’ve pivoted two of our regular team meeting formats to purely focus on LGD discussions and getting ready for launch
- Roadmap planning: Review backlog to focus on key resident user tasks + internal needs
- Resident engagement: Reaching out to various network groups, panels etc. to showcase key touchpoints (main one being in-site search behaviour) before going live
💭 Final reflections
With public preview, it wasn’t only just showing the residents what’s to come—it’s about strengthening our own internal practice and processes. Every tweak, every lesson, and every shared insight is moving us closer to a website that genuinely works for residents.
There is a lot of behind the scenes work and effort going on across several teams. The next eight weeks will be important in advocating user centred design and hopefully move us to a new digital home that our residents can explore and change with us.
💯 Digital legends of the month:
- who: Intel co‑founder who observed ‘Moore’s Law’ about transistor growth.
- fun fact: originally predicted a doubling roughly every year, later revised to ~2 years.
- who: British mathematician and cryptanalyst; foundational work in computability and codebreaking at Bletchley Park.
- fun fact: The ACM’s top honor—the Turing Award—is named after him.
- who: English mathematician who created Boolean algebra.
- fun fact: ‘Boolean’ logic used in every digital circuit is named after him.
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