Weeknotes #3: transition

Ending one project and moving onto the next

Finishing one project on a high note

Last week I wrapped up a 2-week discovery into how we compensate research participants by doing a research playback to my team and few others from CDS. Before the playback I was feeling anxious — I felt like my findings were too high-level to be useful and just reiterated what people already knew.

But to my relief and also surprise, I got an actual round of applause when I finished the presentation, followed by good discussion of what to do with the findings. I’ve done dozens of research playbacks, most of which receive only mild cursory appreciation and little or no followup. The process of doing and even attending research playbacks had started to feel a bit like a futile chore.

Our discussion was inspiring and I keep coming back to something one of our leaders said (I am paraphrasing here): Right now, we’re in a short period of time in which government is willing to relax its rules. We need to take advantage of that, break the rule and start building a case for why we don’t need those rules anymore.

I keep thinking about how the world is on the cusp of huge fundamental changes to our everyday life — it’s exciting and terrifying.

Moving on

This week I’ve been focused on onboarding to a new (to me) team. For the past year and bit, CDS has been working on a tool to report cybercrime and I’m joining the team as we transition from Beta into a live product. It’s an exciting product and challenge, and I have a lot to catch up on.

It feels good to be part of an agile team again, and to be doing the rituals that keep us motivated and moving forward in the right direction. In particular, we had a really good design/research sync this week where we agreed on design changes as a team (although I didn’t contribute much since I don’t have the context yet.) It’s been a while since I’ve worked closely on designing and product and I remembered how much I love getting stuck into those kind of problems.

Work/life balance — or lack thereof

My baby hasn’t been napping as well as usual so balancing working with all the things I need to do at home has been tricky. At one point this week, I was on a hangout meeting while cooking, trying to explain some to my research colleagues while I turned off my alexa timer and pulled food out of the oven.

I’m letting go of any shame or “mum guilt” over screen time, and guilt over declining a meeting invite in favour of getting outside with my little ones. I fixed up my old bike and took my 4yo for a couple of rides this week — after not cycling for probably 6 years or so (I was too frightened to in London,) cycling felt great and totally exhausting. I can’t wait to do it again (but it’s currently snowing in Ottawa, this is how I feel about that:)

Happy easter everyone! :)