Weeknotes No.91
This week is me riding solo with the 2 little ones, the little ones being 10 and 5 years old. This means heavy meal planning and enough activities to keep everyone’s minds busy!
Luckily I’m a planner, so it feels manageable. Did I mention I’m also working? Another list for that too; no one is left out!
Monday
The day starts off as it should - a wander around the streets on a scooter… well… I walk slowly/fast behind in their dust whilst they pretend to be police cars chasing bad crims. Whatever tires them out, right!
The day of meetings always starts with a weekend catch-up, then stand-up - this is where I list everything I managed to do Friday, which, weirdly, was so much work it was unreal. It was one of those late flourishes where I was just in a creative groove.
1pm is my usual design meeting, where all the work from Friday was impressively received and signed off.
I also wanted to touch on topics such as scale. We’re now at the point of not moving things around unless it’s purposeful. We have users using this and I don’t want to move certain things just for the sake of design.
Now we’re moving into many users, it’s time to be far more concrete and thoughtful about: “Yep, this works. We’ve shown the users and it’s just time to let it take root.”
We ended the day with Robyn making fajitas. I’m so glad that she likes to cook and learn things. It’s such a great skill being able to cook and cut veg. It sounds basic and silly, but I know loads of adults who barely know what an oven is.
As a bonus, she learns that veg is also incredibly useful for making meals bigger, but also taking the taste of seasoning to the next level (thanks, onions!).
I also worked an absolute TON on Bobbin and Bumble using my brain, Google Analytics and Search Console, and ChatGPT - this is a dream combo for me and I bloody love this stuff.
Doing optimisation (for phase 2) was heavily left behind, but I just decided to get a charge on and go at it. So tons of amends are happening and yes… I made a task list with 11 items, and I’ve done 3.
These included cart improvements (UX stuff as well as upsell), PDP content improvements led by queries on social media, Google and on-site, and finally updating our “complementary buy this as well” line-up per product. Took an age, but I’m delighted that Shopify has this as a report!
Tuesday
Can I go back to bed?
Morning starts with a walk that was more for me than the kids - defo the wake-up I needed. It ain’t that warm here, and that was a good kick up the bum.
I have been waking up at 6am to do Bobbin and Bumble work, before work, before walks, before breakfast making, and it’s really making me feel a lot more creative and output-y (is that a word?).
It also means… I can watch documentaries that aren’t made for kids’ ears. The latest one was Netflix’s Maternal Instinct. That twist was too fucking much and made me sick.
I’ve been writing Weeknotes and putting posts out on LinkedIn as an outlet, something to share with people about what I am thinking. It can be design thoughts, life thoughts and just general nonsense, but I can confirm it has certainly helped me shape a voice online already.
My inbox feels a lot different, but I am hoping the content I am sharing isn’t the same AI crap you see every day on the platform… mostly because I am writing it!
Wednesday
Morning folks. This morning is house-owner tasks early doors (6-7am): put the bin out, do the washing (darks, if you must know) and then… sit down with a coffee and watch the Laci Peterson docu.
3 docs in 4 days… all the same ilk. I won’t be the same!
Again, working on B&B (Bobbin and Bumble) and concentrating a heck of a lot of time on optimising the cart and finding out the next task.
I am ranking tasks by “leading with data” and asking: where do people enter, where do they exit, and why aren’t they buying more than one thing? Do they even know we do other things?
So many questions that data is so helpful in clearing up, but as with all design and ecommerce, it starts with assumptions.
Assumption batting - let’s work out the assumptions and bat them away.
This evening, I’m at swimming with the girl - just a cool 3 hours by the pool.
Say hello to dehydration for me.
Thursday
Off to the Mine (or as my son calls it… THE MINED).
It rained, but we absolutely loved it. We made badges, went on a private tour with an ex-miner (which was amazing), did the Time Tunnel (which is OK… but we’d done a ton by then), and ate packed lunch in the car due to the absolute pisssss poooor weather.
My mate messaged me saying it was boring, but my kids tell me otherwise. They loved it and kept saying they want to come back again!
So I would call that a win!
After that long day, kids in bed for 8:30pm (which never happens during the hols) and me clinging on for life at 9pm.
Friday
Woke up early doors and started working on the craft, updating Bobbin and Bumble’s landing pages.
I am still grinding through those PDPs, but we have a lot of entry points on the site (which isn’t a bad thing at all) and informing users that we sell a lot of other stuff is key, and one major thing we are missing out on.
Doing this without ramming it down the user’s throat is a skill that needs to be thought out.
Worky work stuff - I was asked to help out on a presentation which is happening next week, one of those bigguns that I absolutely love doing.
I offered to support the incredible person who is leading it. He’s really strong and one of those talkers that you just want to listen to, but I felt he was overwhelmed with a huge workload, bank holiday, and I hate just thinking that he believes he HAS to do it all.
Especially when I’m chomping at the bit to sell, dance and sing about the work we’ve done in User Research and the trends coming out of it.
One of those “you asked for it, we done it” type presentations, which I absolutely love!
If you couldn’t tell, I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved as a team on this one. It’s a proper service that’s so polished and well-oiled.
Tonight is swimming. Robyn is defo running on fumes after this week - but she loves swimming sooo that usually means:
Swimming lesson is at 5:30.
- I’ll let her know this early, around 9am, and keep reminding her every hour.
- She has to tidy her room up.
- She has to get dressed and brush her teeth and hair.
- She has to set off before the traffic (4:45 latest).
- She has to pack her swimming bag.
It’s 4:30, and she’s done none of this.
I wonder where she gets this from…
WHO SAID ME?
Also this week I posted a pretty hot take on a project I worked on:
My DMs, calls and inbox action - never mind the follower count - have gone very much up, which is interesting as I didn’t think it was THAT hot but… must be the rainy weather.
I’ve said more on the podcast…
Speaking of which…
Ahem.
Roll on next week! ✌️