Month: March 2022

Weeknote 10/2022

Posted on March 13, 2022March 13, 2022 by Doug Belshaw

For some reason, I suppose due to (post-?)pandemic malaise, I take far fewer photos than I used to. So few, in fact, that I sometimes struggle, as I am doing this week, to find one to illustrate and add a bit of interest to my weeknote. So instead, I will do without. My words will have to suffice.

This week has felt like a bit of a rollercoaster. But not one of those rollercoasters that make you go upside-down and loop-the-loop. Rather, a more gentle rollercoaster, one that might cause your hat to blow off in a downhill section and then perhaps the whole thing ends with a water splash.

A conversation this week confirmed something that I had been starting to realise as 2022 progresses. I guess you could say that the realisation was the ‘water splash’ referenced above, and constituted acknowledging that… client work is kinda boring. Whoah. There, I said it.

Let me immediately put a heavy caveat on this. Some work that we do through WAO, although technically paid for by a client, feels like a partnership. I’d definitely put our work with Participate in this category (which is best accessed through our new MVP website badges.community). I’d also put the work that I’m doing through Dynamic Skillset with the Bonfire team on the Zappa project in the same category.

I guess this begs the question: what’s the difference between client work and partnership work? The answer, I think, comes in the way that both sides approach working together. Instead of one side having the money and power, dictating terms to the other, it’s a negotiation. There’s a shared vision, and a better world to work towards.

The conversation I alluded to earlier was with Cade Diehm, founder of The New Design Congress. The way that he explained they way that they’re working to have organisation partner with them on a roadmap that they’ve already agreed upon was so refreshing. Laura was also part of that conversation, so we’ve got some conversations to have. (One of them might be over dinner as we’ll meet IRL with our partners in Amsterdam next weekend for the first time in over two years!)

Hannah, my wife, was away in London this week for a couple of days for a meetup with her NHS Digital team mates. She’s recently been told that her contract is being renewed for another six months, which is great, but she hasn’t had the actual contract through yet. This is a little frustrating as a great house was put up for sale just around the corner from us this week. Although our current home isn’t on the market yet, it could be quite quickly — as it was for a few weeks just over a year ago. The area and price bracket we’re looking at for our next house is unbelievably specific, so to (probably) lose out on this one, is annoying.

There’s a chance that I’m a little bit more irritable than normal given that I haven’t slept very well this week. This is likely due to parental hyper-vigilance while Hannah was away, but also the start of hayfever season. For the last few years, I’ve become used to being on daily Loratadine from March to September. Weirdly, this corresponds with the time of the year when I have most energy, so I associate taking tiny hayfever tablets with productivity!

Another reason I didn’t sleep very well on Tuesday night was after I attended the second Tethix pilot fellowship session. It was pretty intense and, as it’s running between 20:00 and 23:00 local time, my brain was buzzing as I tried to get to sleep. Coupled with birds singing the dawn chorus from on top of the dormer window next to our bed in the loft conversion, and the whisky I drank while collaborating during the Tethix session, I was a little groggy on Wednesday morning…

The main thing that’s been on my mind this week has been preparations for going away to the Netherlands next week. I’ll be away for eight days which doesn’t sound like a lot until I point out that I’ll be in four different places during that time, and that I haven’t been on a work trip for almost exactly two years. I had logistical questions to figure out, not only in terms of travel between places in the Netherlands, but also in terms of entry requirements. Thankfully, it looks like I just need to do a Covid test in Newcastle airport.

I also had some sartorial questions to answer. I haven’t bought anything other than hoodies and jeans for the last couple of years, so I needed to think about things to wear for the four sessions I’m running. What does smart casual look like in 2022? Let’s hope what I’ve ended up buying arrives on time, looks like it did online, and goes together in a way that lets people assume that I’m dressed that way on purpose.

Some people might be amazed that I’ve got this far without mentioning Russia’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Well, there’s literally nothing I can do about that, and getting micro-updates about the war isn’t good for my mental health. Instead, I have an ambient awareness of what’s going on, and also read my subscription to the print edition of The Guardian Weekly. I’ve also donated just over a quarter of my crypto directly to the Ukrainian government, which you can join me in doing by following the guidance in this article.

Next week, we’ve got a rearranged co-op half day, as one of our members was sick last week. Then I’ve got 2.5 more days of work at home, before heading to the Netherlands (and in particular Leeuwarden) on Thursday afternoon. I’m meeting Hannah in Amsterdam on Friday night, and we’re staying there until Monday.

I’m looking forward to my time away, but also I’ll be pleased when it’s all over and completed successfully. I’ll then be able to focus on my next trip, which is walking Hadrian’s Wall with Aaron. We finalised booking our accommodation, which is a mixture of camping and hostels, earlier this week. I’ll probably need to buy some more clothes for that trip, too!

Exploring the sweet spot for Zappa project approaches to misinformation

Posted on March 10, 2022March 10, 2022 by Doug Belshaw

While we know that misinformation is not a problem that can ever be fully ‘solved’, it is important to try and reduce its harms. Last week, we published the first version of a report based on user research as part of the Zappa project, an initiative from the Bonfire team.

This week, I’ve narrated a Loom video giving an overview of the mindmap embedded in the report. This was requested by Ivan, as he found that the way that I explain it captures some nuance that perhaps isn’t in the report (which is more focused on recommendations).

Another thing I was tasked with this week was creating a Venn diagram from the three types of approaches that could be taken for the technical development for the Zappa project. These were slightly tweaked from suggestions made by one of our user research participants. As you can see in the above diagram, these are:

Technical — improving the way that users interact with information
Procedural — improving the process of capturing and displaying information
Relational — improving the way that humans interact with one another

It’s unlikely that any one approach would sit squarely as being only one type of approach. For example, spending time thinking about the way that information is presented to users and allowing them to control that sits right in the middle of all three.

There are three overlaps other than the one right in the middle. These are:

Technical / Procedural — we’ve currently labelled this intersection as Efficiency as using technical approaches to improve processes usually makes them more efficient. This might include making it easier to block certain types of posts, for example.
Procedural / Relational — we’ve labelled this intersection as Reliability because process when considered in terms of relationships is often focused on repeatable patterns. This might include, for example, being able to validate that the account you’re interacting with hasn’t been hijacked.
Relational / Technical — we’ve used the label Consistency for this one as one of the things we found from our research is that users are often overwhelmed by information. We can do something about that, so this might include helping users feel in charge of their feeds to help avoid context collapse or aesthetic flattening.

You will notice the version number appended to this diagram is ‘v0.1’. It might be that we haven’t found the right words for these overlaps. It might be that some are more important than others. We’d love feedback from anyone paying attention to the Zappa project, whether you’ve been following the work around Bonfire since the beginning, or whether this is the first you’re hearing of it.

If it helps, feel free to grab the Google Slides original of the above Venn diagram, or comment below on a) what you think is good, b) anything you have questions about, or c) anything that concerns you.

Weeknote 09/2022

Posted on March 6, 2022March 6, 2022 by Doug Belshaw

It’s March! Finally, I feel like a functional human being after five months (Oct-Feb) where, each year, I’ve learned to Just Get Through It. The sun is streaming through the window as I write this, the birds are waking me up each morning, and spring has sprung.

There’s lots going on in the world at the moment, not least a continuing war in Ukraine, a related refugee crisis, and the impact of climate change being felt everywhere. I’m learning the value of Stoicism and putting it into practice by trying to separate the things I’m thinking about into those things I control, those things I influence, and those I neither control nor influence.

Red background with title 'Thing over which you have NO control or influence'.

Large yellow oval with title 'Things over which you have SOME influence'

Small green circle within yellow oval with title 'What you control'

With many big scary things, they’re in the red zone. So all I can do, realistically, is donate money, raise awareness, and try not to add to the world’s problems.

The above image is for an activity we’ll be adding to the Learn with WAO site which launched this week. It’s a place for links to our email courses, resources, and the podcast I record with Laura. Our intern, Anne, has done a great job with it over the last few months, and it comes out of work we did with a bunch of charities during the pandemic. I’m pleased we’ve got somewhere to point people towards for free, high quality, easy-to-use resources. We use them ourselves, of course, with clients!

This week’s been a relatively busy one and, to ensure I don’t bury the lede, I want to make sure that I share the first version of a report I created sharing findings from the initial user research we’ve done for the Zappa project. It’s been really interesting work and I’ve loved doing it. Thankfully, I’ve got some more stuff to do with the team over the coming weeks. Our findings were not quite what I expected when it comes to misinformation in federated networks.

In other work, we’ve paused work with one of our clients which I’m very pleased about. They’re doing a lot of work on many different fronts and we were asking them to spend a lot of time, money, and effort on something they’ve never done before. Hopefully, this pause will allow them to regroup and be able to give the time needed to the digital transformation and new product stuff we’ve been helping them prepare for.

That won’t necessarily be anytime soon, so it does mean that we’ll potentially have some availability for when I come back from taking most of April off. Our Greenpeace projects are continuing, as is our work on the Keep Badges Weird project with Participate. I’m really pleased that I can now point to badges.community, a domain that WAO has had registered for years, and now has a use for!

I started the Tethix pilot programme on tech ethics this week, which was great. It’s really well put together and the timezone differences mean that I do it at a time when I’m usually not doing anything very productive (20:00-23:00 every Tuesday). I’ve got to meet some new people, and we’re thinking about some important issues. It runs on each of the five Tuesdays in March.

I’ve been doing a lot of logistics work this week, it seems. I’ve been booking flights for my trip to the Netherlands the week after next, campsites for the Hadrian’s Wall walk I’m doing with Aaron next month, and trains for the Learning Technologies conference in May. After going nowhere for two years, I’m going to be travelling a lot in the space of just a few weeks — especially as Team Belshaw is also going on holiday to Croatia in the Easter holidays.

This weekend I went for a long walk, did some stretching exercises via Giggs Fitness, and ran a 5k on the treadmill at the gym. I need to up my game a bit for walking every day for a week along Hadrian’s Wall! My baseline is pretty good, though, so I should be alright.

Right now, I need to go and get ready because, like a civilised middle class English family we’ve got reservations for Sunday dinner at the new restaurant that’s opened down the road from us. I just hope we’ll be back to watch the second half of the Manchester derby…

Top photo taken yesterday while cutting my hair. I learned to do this pretty effectively during lockdown, and saw no reason to stop. When my family isn’t around, it does mean I need to take a photo of the back of my head, though!