Work notes just do not seem important or even valued at this point, the world is eating its-self, with endless riots, and stupid social media posts and this affects my friends and that pisses me off. I sound like I’m blaming the world, it’s more those small-brained thick pieces of shit who blame everything on everyone else and have their agendas.

It’s overwhelming, upsetting massively and confusing to my children, who have friends affected by all of this too. Urgh.

What have you all missed?
I completed a Figma prototype, it’s good - I’m happy with it all and I think it might have legs. I expect to iterate, would be weird to not, but my Figma file is now nearly where it needs to be to iterate fast, prototype faster and is getting a step closer to scale for other teams.
AstraZeneca hired a great User Researcher and she is an absolute dream to work with, and we are currently rolling through multiple sessions of user research with our brilliant users and finding out what makes them tick, what makes them work well and why they think our service is rubbish or great - if you didn’t know, I love user research! I have rolled out a very simple-to-understand phased approach for design releases, I have until Christmas on this project and want to maximise my time and output as much as possible and set expectations on what they will get, why they will get it and do they want anything else, and amazingly - this plan completely aligned with their delivery plan, it’s like it was meant to be.. or we both inspired each other - mad eh?
Get a plan, get work done, get it live, bask in the glory - it’s a great plan (joke!).

We officially announced edwardsandwalker.com has gone live (I waited for the owner to announce it, but he’s terrible at admin.. like myself!), a website built on a WordPress platform - who’d have thought! It’s been a great project to get working on and knowing the owners as close as I do, meant I could really feel their passion for the project and their company and really push their own doubts and worries to the side and deliver something that matched their brilliant opticians and style and more importantly - their personality and aims for their business.

We returned from a holiday break in Mallorca, it was.. actually, it wasn’t sunny - it had the worst weather I’ve ever been in.. and I used to holiday in Wales (joke, I promise!) it was a lovely break. Still, next time.. remind me not to drive as much, I need a holiday to get over that holiday.

What am I looking forward to?
Finding out more information from our users, aligning that with business needs and going all out attack on turning this project and service into something the company is super proud of and can use it as a showpiece to showcase how design, development and delivery are all one.

I am also taking the kids to watch a bit of non-league on the weekend, Guiseley FC to be exact. Should be a cracker… I actually have no idea - but i’ll be returning with a review of the pies.

Aiming to watch the new Alien film with a friend next week, it has been reviewed very well (for an Alien film) and trod carefully around spoilers, and I just need an excuse to drink huge sugar-free drinks, and eat huge amounts of popcorn and sweets. I’m 42, and this is high living, just keep the Gaviscon handy. Expect a mundane review from myself next week too - which will be better, the pie at Guiseley or the Alien film?

Watch of the week
I am Darren. A BBC comedy short, this is bloody funny and what you’d expect from the brilliant Josh Pugh. A sports mockumentary, following the story of a visually impared GB Paralympian, the scene of him “zoning out” whilst cycling had me in tears. 15 minutes of greatness.