Ben Holliday is an experienced designer, leader, writer and speaker. This is his blog (started in 2005). If you’re new to this site, Ben has published a playbook for design linking together many of his blog posts from the past 8 years of work in the pubic sector. You can get in touch or follow him on Twitter.
I usually publish an end of year review (2015, 2016, 2017). This year I’ve been trying to write more regular monthly updates (all of which are here) so I’ll try to keep this shorter.
It’s been a year of change. From work (see November update), to family (see May update).
My November round up.
Everything is busy (again).
I’m surviving on something like 20-30% less sleep at the moment thanks to Zac’s arrival (conservative estimate/and I get to catch up with sleep a bit when traveling for work).
This is a quick update to cover the last couple of months.
May was all about the boy.
A busy month that included the Easter break and a family break to Somerset. In the meantime I’ve been mostly working in London, and we also wrapped up our FutureGov work in Glasgow.
I hit a sweet spot with writing this month.
I made a conscious effort to finish some things I had in draft, setting aside some dedicated time over a weekend.
A quick update this month so I keep to schedule.
Overall, more travel throughout the UK. I’ve mostly been travelling between London, Glasgow and Newcastle. With a couple of visits to Manchester in between.
I also went further afield than usual and flew to Milan for 24 hours, before dashing back for my daughter’s 8th birthday celebrations.
Lots of travel all over the UK this month.
In-between work travel we had a great family break at Forest Holidays near Maldan in North Yorkshire, with a day trip to Whitby for fish & chips. There was snow on the first day of the trip which caught us a little off guard.
My monthly notes for January 2018.
My end of year review for 2017.
This year was the toughest of my career so far.
I’ve managed to steer our design team through a considerable amount of change at DWP Digital (previously, Digital DWP) after most of our leadership team suddenly moved on to take over at the Government Digital Service in August.
2015 was a big year. I’ve never worked as hard or travelled as much. I lost count of how many train journeys it took and nights in not-always-so-luxury hotel rooms.
Back in January I blogged for Digital DWP introducing our new design roles. We announced that we were going to hire a design team to deliver new digital services for government.