At work
So I got onto a new project, and in the beginning I was splitting my time between this new project and 111 online. It rapidly became clear that if I continued that way I would melt. So now I am on this new project full time.
I think the official name is “transforming the patient experience of first contact“, which naturally means it’s now referred to as First Contact™.
We’ve been somewhat under the radar until Brin and Matt started mentioning us a bit.
Here’s my teaser trailer:
Every day, patients and the people who care for them seek help from the NHS for new or recurring health problems.
Often they don’t know the right place to start, how urgent their problem really is, or what to expect.
When their needs aren’t met on first contact, some people:
- keep trying the same service
- try multiple methods that don’t join up
- give up and don’t get the help they need
For patients, poor, disconnected experiences can contribute to worsening health problems and avoidable harm.
For the NHS, this creates inefficiency, wastes valuable resources, and impedes access to equitable, timely, appropriate care.
There’s a lot to dig into, and it’s big and scary and making me age faster. Shifting from Making Stuff into Hand Wavy Stuff.
Also at work:
I’ve been worrying away about a possible Jackpot or Cul-de-sac Singularity (I made that one up).
This is not news to anyone, but I think there’s a possible future where our digital products become more and more siloed (or suffer from a serious internal lack of logic while presenting a seemingly coherent face) because the things that are needed to underpin their evolution aren’t there, or aren’t strong enough.
I played the part of design assessor on an alpha for Medical Certificate of Cause of Death. This was of particular fascination for me because… well, check the dates in here. If you ever wanted to get an idea of ”these things can be a long haul”, you could do worse. It went well, with a good solid team and an excellent not-a-powerpoint-but-a-website base of knowledge. So that is good news.
At leisure
Here’s something nice - the immense deftness of Humphrey Ocean.
Earlier in the summer I saw some Ilana Savdie in the flesh and they completely blew me away.
So there’s the Ocean Park series which is awesome, but I reckon Richard Diebenkorn’s “cityscapes” have heaps of that magic flicker between “It’s a painting - look, paint, flat, brushstrokes…” and “It’s a picture of a place though…”
I saw some Donald Judd prints and they were a lot nicer than Donald Judd objects. A bit more human. In the same place were a few Josef Albers and they reminded me what a monomaniac that dude must have been
Finally an oldie but a goodie (for the oldies): www.webdesignmuseum.org/golden-age-of-web-design
Thanks for stopping by! Until next time, let’s be careful out there.