Weeknotes by Chan #02

4 min readJun 18, 2021

Hello again 👋🏼

Really falling in love with writing these weeknotes. Friday morning is now a nice little time of the day where I can have a good old reflection, empty my brain and share my experiences with you all.

Here are five short stories from my week:

Getting my teeth stuck into government.

It’s coming up to two months since I joined dxw as a designer. It’s also my first time working in government! Last week, I joined a project as a service designer working with Homes England — the government’s housing accelerator who are #MakingHomesHappen to help improve neighbourhoods & grow communities.

Our goal is to build a new system which Homes England can use to sell and lease land to housing developers across the UK.

Initially, I was overwhelmed by the language, acronyms and pace of work but I have to say, after a lot of reading, talking and a couple custard creams, it has been a real engaging and eye-opening experience. This week, I facilitated a workshop with the Homes England team to really dig deep into some of the most frustrating pain-points on their journey followed by ‘blue-sky thinking’ on what the absolute ideal process looks like. Really looking forward to next week where we can layer on real user conversations.

A new content design friend.

This week, I have been collaborating with the lovely Sarah Walsh from Content Design London; it’s amazing to work with someone who just gets it and screams UCD [User centred design]. I am all about simplifying design and making language as digestible as possible so I can see the next few months being very inspirational and a lovely learning opportunity. Looking forward to develop content design practices as I truly feel it’s a valuable skill to have, or at least an understanding as a designer, whatever kind you may be.

Keeping in touch.

Me and my ex-colleague Nicolas Jones had a good old chat on Wednesday evening about all things life, work and design. Having both joined the BBC Trainee scheme in 2018, it’s great that we now work in different industries and can share experiences as we accelerate through our career.

We exchanged workshop techniques, had a debate around why some companies prefer generalist over specialist roles and finally ending with a cheesy reflection on how much we’ve grown over the last few years. Anyway 30 minutes turned into 2 hours, but time flies when you’re having fun ey? Top tip — stay connected and keep filling your diaries with random, after-work coffees.

Good vibes, good life.

I had my first session with my life coach Gaby last week and I expressed my love of reading but never having enough time. An amazing reading tip she gave me really stuck with me.

Divide the amount of pages in a book across a month, year or whenever you want to read it by, and stick to it.

Game changer. So simple. Every night before bed, I make sure I read 26 pages to reach my goal to finish this book in ten days. It’s working amazingly so far as I have just passed the half way line.

Vex King has written ‘Good Vibes, Good Life’ brilliantly and really breaks down techniques to help you become better than the person you were yesterday, every day. He believes that greatness cannot exist without purpose, love, selflessness, humility, appreciation, kindness and happiness. So if you’re into the self development world like me, go invest.

Hay fever fury.

Don’t even get me started on this. The pollen has entered my passages differently this year. My desk went from being populated with sharpies to Sudafed decongestant liquid. Not mentioning the tablets, eye drops, vicks and tissue roll bin. Since I have been banging on about this all week, I have come to find a little community of hay fever sufferers. Here are some fun tips and facts (or not?) that I would like to leave you with. Of course, please take this advice with a pinch of a salt and trust the professionals first!

Open your windows but close your blinds so the pollen can’t fly in
Stuff your nose with Vicks/Vaseline to stop the pollen from entering
There is a hay-fever injection that exists — ask your GP
Honey may work? Not sure whether this is for your nose or mouth though!

All in all, another productive week minus the above drama, but now I am ready to switch off for the weekend, get back to the gym and have some quality family time. Enjoy!