Town hall clock feedback
Surrounding your team with data
Just like making user research a team sport, I believe successful teams make sure everyone is focussed on the data behind the product they’re delivering.
I don’t think this means everyone has to become a data scientist. Instead, it means everyone having a sense of what’s happening.
It’s about making the right data just visible enough in order for a team to make better decisions.
The town hall clock
I live in a small town in the North West of England. Right in the middle of our town is the town hall with it’s familiar clock tower – you can’t miss it.
Every 15 minutes throughout the day the clock chimes. It keeps going, telling us the time every hour on the hour, reminding us of the passing of time as we move towards each hour mark.
I noticed a while ago that no one pays much attention to the clock. It’s clear that everyone knows it’s there and, based on my own experience, everyone hears it. If you need to know the time you can think back to when you last heard the clock chime.
If you spend time in the centre of London you’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever heard Big Ben – this is the extreme example of a town hall clock.
The important point is that the town hall clock gives us a sense of time. A sense of progress. We don’t always consciously hear it but it’s always there providing feedback for us to work with.
Sensing feedback
Something I like about digital delivery spaces in government is that most teams have dashboards. These are mostly digital like the GOV.UK performance platform. Sometimes they’re just whiteboards manually updated by someone on the team.
The important thing is that everyone has a sense of this feedback. It’s there in the background. But, most importantly, it’s feedback that’s there all the time.
This should be an anchor for teams. Letting people know how much progress they’re making. Something that stops them losing focus or drifting away from the problem.
From what I’ve seen no one stops for long to look at most of the dashboards in our office. I don’t see people stop and stare at dashboards, but most teams, especially the strongest teams, have a good sense of what’s happening with their data.
Better sense making
I think that there’s something to be said about designing better feedback mechanisms. Things that help give us a continued sense of the progress we’re making in order to keep things on track and keep focussed.
Dashboards are just one way of communicating data for a product or service. There are many other opportunities to share or communicate data.
Visual feedback is just the start. Just like the town hall clock, audio feedback could be a great communication tool for teams.
Feedback could also be responsive. Think about how this could be triggered using voice recognition services. These could create tailored feedback responding to team conversations or activities.
Finding ways to communicate what’s happening is another design problem for your team so make sure it’s a priority. I think it’s a creative challenge worth solving.
What will be your town hall clock?
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 18 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky, less frequently now on X (formally Twitter), and on LinkedIn.