Hi, my name is Benjy Stanton and I’m an interaction designer.
Getting stuck into GitHub and Jira is not the most creative way to work, but it's a good way to get things done. GitHub I merged my first pull request into our core prototype this week. It was the fiddly little change that I mentioned last time. But the interesting bit was learning about the journeys within the prototype and how the data and routing files work to create realistic scenarios. I'm…
What I've been up to on RAVS core and RAVS plus. Work I think I've mentioned before, but I'm supporting 2 teams in my new contract. RAVS (record a vaccination service) is made up of the core team and the plus team. It's stretching me, mostly in a good way. I feel like I have a lot on my plate, but I'd much rather be busy than not. Core team Core team are focused on supporting the live (well, beta)…
Finalising a design ahead of private beta. Going to see Neutrals, The Flaming Lips and The Streets. Back from hols and straight into it This week was busy, both in and out of work. I got back from my hols to find a few user research session invites in my inbox, starting Monday morning. It was great to see the wider team turning up to observe user research sessions alongside UCD (user centred…
Eiffel Tower, Disneyland, Vulture Capitalism and heat waves. I've just got back from a big family holiday in France. 18 of us drove down in convey from Swansea, crossing from Folkestone to Coquelles on the Eurotunnel to visit Paris and Disneyland. It was lovely to spend a whole week with my parents, my siblings and their partners and kids (and even some of the kids brought their partners). It's so…
Some new priorities landed this week, and I've finally got access to all the tools. Access to Github I finally got access to Github this week. I'm giving myself a gold star for pushing up a fix on the same day to one of our smaller repos. Reprioritisation of work I'm working across two teams. One is focused on iterating and maintaining the core live service. The other is looking at adding new…
Getting access to emails, Slack. And my first Jira ticket. Onboarding continues I got access to most tools this week, including email, Slack (ah, I've missed Slack), QA environments, Mural, Jira and Confluence. I even have a ticket on the board with my face on it which feels like a good milestone. The ticket I've been assigned is looking at how we might give our users, in occupational health…
My first week on NHSE's record a vaccination service. Joining NHS England I joined the RAVS (record a vaccination service) team at NHS England (NHSE) this week. Working on a contract via TPX Impact . Shout out to Frankie and others for helping me to settle in. It's great to be joining a team with some familiar faces! I'm excited to be working with NHSE, both my parents work in healthcare, one is a…
A double weeknote starting 30 March 2026. Continuing the discovery phase and a trip to North Wales. Discovery progress The discovery I'm working on has already revealed a nice surprise. The internal users are not following the intended procedure properly, so we think they can cut out a few steps from their as-is workaround straight away. I still think there is value in pushing ahead with the…
A double weeknote starting 16 March 2026. Kicking off a discovery Starting to get a bit more momentum back in work now that we have our April to June priorities sorted. I'm leading a short discovery to help improve an inefficient casework process. I've really enjoyed digging into the problem over the past few weeks and we already have a pretty detailed journey map, a rough service blueprint, and…
Axe-con I managed to watch a couple of the Axe-con talks the other week. Axe-con is a free accessibility conference. You can watch the talks for free as long as you register. I watched Anna Cook 's and Stéphanie Walter 's talks from the design track. Anna Cook Some quotes I liked from Anna's talk... "Accessibility is not a feature. It is system design." "Designing for diagnoses creates brittle…
I've had a patchy weeknoting record so far this year. Work has been challenging, and there is plenty of life admin filling up my weekends that isn't leaving much energy to write on the weekend. We're switching cars at the moment and all the paperwork and expenses are getting me down. Tax, insurance, finance, warranties, cleaning, repairs. It's a lot to juggle, but we are nearly there. We're…
No notes this week sorry, but too many good links not to share them this weekend. Here are the design, accessibility and public sector digital links that caught my eye this week. GOV.UK Prototype Kit - Data driven prototyping by Joe Lanman Accessible design is digital infrastructure by Anna E Cook Easy Read Standard The open source design stack by Scott Riley Accessible faux-nested interactive…
I've been continuing to focus on some detailed journey maps this week. They've reached a good point in their maturity, so I've begun to share them with the team and I think they're going down well so far. I've gone into a lot of detail and it's helped me to show how much time and effort is being spent on various case working tasks across the internal side of the service. It's now easier to spot…
This week has been fairly positive in work. I've managed to get my head stuck in to new series of journey maps and I'm already feeling like I'm getting a lot of value out of them. I'm capturing 4 journeys carried out by internal case workers. I've looked into these journeys before, but this time I'm trying to be more accurate with my mapping, and more intentional about how I share the findings.…
Posting this a bit late due to a busy weekend. The first week back in January was a mixed bag. We had some sad family news over the Christmas break so I was thankful for a relatively gentle return to work. Component library We're working on a component library idea to try and address some of the design inconsistencies we're seeing on the internal service we're working on. The service is powered by…
I haven't been weeknoting much recently. I've been focusing on Cymru Ddigidol . Plus work has been a bit tough. But, I wanted to round off the year with one more post and some highlights. Finishing the year with user research We finished the year off with a round of user research. In fact, my last meeting of 2025 was observing some remote usability testing, which seems like a great way to go out.…
The Cymru Ddigidol website is an unofficial community project to share digital resources in Wales. Ever since GovCamp Cymru last month, I've been working on a little website with Nia and Monika . We wanted to create something that promoted some of the great resources that are being shared in the Cymru Ddigidol Slack and also help to amplify some of the weeknoters and people working in the open…
A round up of gigs I've been to in 2025. 16 live music events 14 gigs 2 festivals 7 in Cardiff, 6 in Swansea, 1 in Port Talbot, 1 in Llandeilo, 1 in Bristol 12 standing 4 seated 40 bands (ish) 7 Welsh language bands 🏴 3 cover bands 13 indoor 3 outdoor Gig of the year Caribou My year in gigs In date order, January to December. The Smyths and Billy Blagg Gwilym Bowen Rhys Trio and Cadog…
A weeknote starting 10 November 2025. Usability testing a casework backlog view This week's highlight was a round of user research, and the first usability testing session I've been a part of since starting my new contract. We were usability testing a new design for the first time, so I was quite nervous that we hadn't got it quite right, but the initial findings were positive and it certainly…
My notes and reflections from the session about working in the open. I went to my first ever GovCamp Cymru on Friday, it was a great event. Thank you to the organisers and volunteers for making it happen. I went to 3 sessions, here are my notes from the first session on working in the open, that was pitched by Monika. I really loved this session. Thank you Monika for pitching it. (By the way you…
A weeknote starting 27 October 2025. I’ve been away for most of this week so I don’t have much work stuff to report on, but I’m looking forward to a few extra curricular things next week. Design Swansea I’m going to watch my friend Dylan talk at Design Swansea on Thursday 6 November. I haven’t been for ages, but I’m really looking forward to this next one. It’s always a great meet-up. GovCamp…
A weeknote starting 20 October 2025. Just a quick weeknotes this time as I'm off on hols for a few days. Mapping Work was a bit up and down, but finished on a real high. A map I've been working on has been getting more attention from the wider team. The product and delivery folk in particular have been using it to help inform the roadmap they are shaping up, ready to share with the higher ups.…
A weeknote starting 13 October 2025. Service design community of practice I'm really enjoying spending time with the service design community of practice (COP) in The Intellectual Property Office (IPO). It's nice to have a safe space to let off some steam, away from the pressure of delivery teams. It's also great to share ideas and experiences. I've been part of COPs before where I've felt under…
A weeknote starting 6 October 2025. Highlight this week was my day in the office on Thursday. I decided not to drive in, but that made things logistically difficult. I had to cycle to the station early in the morning, then get 2 trains and a bus to get to the office. I'm glad I did it, but it took a lot of effort, so I don't know how often I'll do it in future. Luckily I only have to go into the…
A weeknote starting 29 September 2025. My first user research session I had my first remote user research session! We observed an internal user that was completing one of their common weekly tasks using the new beta service. I've watched a few videos of users doing similar things already, but it was great to get an uninterrupted view of the time it takes to complete things. We also had a chance to…
I often see disabled buttons being used by teams, and it can take a bit of work to convince people why they aren't always a good idea. Here's a list of posts that explore why disabled buttons can cause usability and accessibility issues for users. I think Zahid sums up the solution well… "…leave the button active. If a user happens to press on it without performing the required action, use error…
A double weeknote starting 15 September 2025. Assigned to a sprint team I've just finished the fourth week of my new contract. I was too busy to blog last weekend, so this post is a double weeknote. These past 2 weeks have been a change of pace after a relatively calm first 2 weeks of onboarding. Some new delivery squads have been created to work on a service that’s in its beta phase and I’ve been…
A weeknote starting 8 September 2025. Installing the GOV.UK prototype kit on Windows Everyone I've met here so far (even interaction designers) uses Windows PCs. I have to say that the hardware that they supply is generous and has a decent spec though. It includes a Surface tablet and 2 monitors that I picked up on my first day to take home. I had a go at setting up the GOV.UK prototype kit on…
A weeknote starting 1 September 2025. After a couple of unplanned weeks off inbetween contracts (I blogged about week 1 , but not week 2) this was my first week at the Intellectual Property Office (IPO). Back in Newport I went to their office on my first day (Monday) to join some onboarding sessions, meet my manager and pickup my IT kit. The onboarding was very well organised, and I'm joining with…
A weeknote starting 18 August 2025. I'm half way through my 2 weeks of funemployment, waiting for my next contract to start at Intellectual Property Office (IPO). Apart from responding to a few onboarding emails, I've been trying to switch off from work and have some family time. Standing out through writing I was going to write about how I found my new contract, but I don't really have the energy…
A weeknote starting 11 August 2025. My last week Sadly, this week was my last as an interaction designer at the Home Office (HO). After 2 years and 5 months, this was my second longest stint in a role since I moved into public sector user-centred design (UCD), just over 10 years ago. Second only to my time at Office for National Statistics (ONS). It feels ironic that my first contracting role…
A weeknote starting 14 July 2025. Update on 10 August 2025 I tried to publish this 3 weeks ago, just before I went on hols. Needless to say, I got something wrong in the rush to post from my phone, so I'm publishing this a bit late. CSS snippet I liked this css snippet that Andy Bell shared. Saving it to remember later. Recommend following Andy for great front-end dev tips. Adds a nice bit of…
A weeknote starting 7 July 2025. Remote usability testing the prototype I did some prototyping in code this week. For the first time in a while. It always gives me a satisfying feeling. It was a good break from the endless meetings of late. We were prepping the prototype for some remote usability testing over Microsoft Teams. After a quick dry run with the user researcher, we realised that giving…
Discovery report After a bit of a delay last week, our discovery report is out and being reviewing by stakeholders. We've had less feedback than I was expecting (I think this is a good thing, because nothing in the report should be a surprise). We've tried to quickly address some initial comments by updating the design and reissuing the report. Hopefully we are showing that we can respond quickly.…
Finishing our discovery report We've finally delivered our discovery report to wrap-up a big phase of work this week. In contains the results of 4 rounds of user research, and includes our recommended direction for the service. In all honesty, it's been painful getting to this point. The design itself has hardly changed in weeks, since finishing the user research rounds. And it feels like we've…
Slow progress I've been feeling frustrated in work again this week at the glacial speed of everything. As mentioned last week, I've been reassigned to new a thing for 50% of my time. But of course it's impossible to completely switch off involvement, so I'm sort of juggling 3 things now. I think part of the problem in the department is that everyone is across multiple things, so everything moves…
This is version 4 of my user manual. View previous versions . If you're unfamilier with the concept, check out this blog post on user manuals by Cassie Robinson . Conditions I like to work in Remote work helps me to drop my kids off at school at a sensible time, it also helps me to recharge between meetings More about why I love remote work I like to work in open, inclusive, multi-disciplinary…
A weeknote starting 2 June 2025. Observing users I'm heading off on the train for 2 more days of observing users, the plan is for a group of us to take turns observing multiple sessions over a couple of weeks. This should give us a really deep understanding of the user's environment, so I'm excited to see what comes out of the synthesis, even if I am slightly daunted about doing 6 hours of…
I don't feel like I have have time for weeknotes at the moment. My evenings and weekends are full of preparation for festivals and birthdays. So, I'm taking a break for a few weeks. But, here are some links to interesting design articles that I've seen recently: Notes from Decolonising service design in government - an open discussion by Clara Greo (Teoh) What’s a good design team anyway? By Kuba…
A weeknote starting 5 May 2025. User research in Bristol This week flew by, starting off with the bank holiday Monday, then we went straight into 2 days of user research in Bristol. This is the 4th round of user research we’ve done on the service. We did 7 semi-moderated interviews, with usability testing of hi-fi prototypes, and some ad-hoc chats around early design mockups. We also had a couple…
A weeknote starting 28 April 2025. Patterns for Welsh public services This week I took a day off to travel to Cardiff to attend a CDPS (Centre for Digital Public Services) workshop: Co-Design Workshop on Service Patterns for Welsh Public Services. I really enjoyed the day, thanks to Liam and the team for running it and inviting me. It was also nice to catch up with Jo, and meet a few people…
A weeknote starting 22 April 2025. I've been doing some more prototyping this week, using the excellent GOV.UK Prototype Kit . I needed to recreate a checkbox question page to mimic an existing product. There were a few things that took me a second to figure out so I'm capturing them here to help me next time. This is because I was in a bit of rush and a little rusty with the kit. I needed to: add…
A weeknote starting 14 April 2025. Know your stakeholders My post last week seemed to go to down well. But, after boldly proclaiming that I'd solved stakeholder management, I was humbled this week. After working hard to gather everyone's opinion, I left one Very Senior Stakeholder out. Then, at a meeting where I was hoping to simply rubber stamp the designs, that Very Senior Stakeholder turned up…
A weeknote starting 7 April 2025. We had a couple of bad stakeholder meetings this week. It started to feel like we were losing their trust and they definitely weren't supportive of the direction our designs were taking. I know stakeholders desires may not always be user-centred. But, without their support and sponsorship, projects can become completely derailed. Money and effort can be wasted,…
A double weeknote starting 24 March 2025. I didn't manage to fit weeknotes in last weekend because I was at my cousin's wedding on Saturday, so these notes cover 2 weeks. Things are still a bit up and down These past few week have been a bit up and down in work. We are still dealing with the fallout of splitting the team in two. In a way, it felt a little bit like onboarding into a new team, or…
A weeknote starting 17 March 2025. This past week was tough and I'm still not feeling in a very weeknote-y mood, but I'm trying to get some thoughts down anyway. After an intense few months of user research and fast prototype iterations, our team has lost momentum a bit. A few things happened at the same time leading to this disruption… new user researcher joined we had program increment (PI)…
A weeknote starting 3 March 2025. PI (program increment) planning I'm heading to London today to join PI (program increment) planning tomorrow. So I'm writing these notes a bit late, from the train (again). Last week was a bit of a break from our usual user research rounds, but we think we have a new user researcher lined up so normal service should be resuming soon. It gave us a bit of time to…
A weeknote starting 24 February 2025. 🏴 Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus (Happy St David's Day)! End of the sprint Lot's of things coming to an end this week. It's the end of the month so I had to put some timesheets and expenses in. You can tell from my expenses alone that it's been a busy month of travelling. It's the end of the sprint, so I've been reflecting on how the 3rd user research round…
A weeknote starting 18 February 2025. These weeknotes are a little late. I was catching up on work over the weekend, so couldn't really justify blogging. But, now I've got a few spare hours on the train, so plenty of time to reflect on last week. I'm heading off to our 3rd user research trip. Another 2 two days spent at an operational area, observing users and doing usability tests. Last time, for…
A double weeknote starting 3 February 2025. These past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind. After our first round of user research 2 weeks ago (which really took up most of the week) we found out that our user researcher was sadly leaving. This put a little extra pressure on an already busy week. We needed to analyse findings, playback the results, visit London to meet some stakeholders and…