Tag: Coronavirus outbreak
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I return to work regularly today for the first time in almost 25 weeks
I return to work regularly today for the first time in almost 25 weeks
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Two months of parenthood
Isobel is our first baby, so it’s difficult to compare having a baby during coronavirus to other times. But it does seem like a strange time to have a baby. There are many disadvantages to the current situation. But there are also some interesting advantages, particularly for me as a father.
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A service design approach to improving student experience
Slides from my UCD Gathering talk on Thursday 15 October 2020, about the work we’ve been doing at the University of Edinburgh to improve the experience of students and staff working with course materials digitally.
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Meeting the challenges of collaborating remotely — Website and Communications Blog
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I realised that while the summer got pretty busy for us, there are a few work blog posts that I haven’t cross-posted here yet. So I will drip-feed them here over the next little while. This first one is from July, where I outlined some of the lessons we have been learning from getting collaborative […]
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Service design and the Mario complex
At Service Design in Government, I discovered that service designers see themselves as Mario. But that is an unrealistic model for what service design should be.
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There will be no “back to normal” — Nesta
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This is more than a month old. In terms of the coronavirus outbreak, that’s an eternity. But I still found this list of possible future scenarios interesting and thought-provoking. It also comes with the major caveat that predicting the future is a mug’s game at the best of times, never mind during these times. This […]
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UK infosec experts flag concern over NHSX contact tracing app — Laurie Clarke — NS Tech
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This is the sort of reason why I don’t trust the state with my data as much as I trust many private companies. Apple and Google have worked together (itself a minor miracle) to develop a method of contact tracing that does not collect personal data and does not invade people’s privacy. NHSX has rejected […]
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Lockdown projects — Month 1
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Each weekend during lockdown, we’re trying to make at least one new thing. These are the little projects giving us a reason to get up at the weekends.
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Meeting the challenges of conducting user research remotely — Website and Communications Blog
The coronavirus outbreak has posed massive challenges for everyone in society. For practitioners of human-centred approaches to design, where face-to-face interaction is often so important to enhancing our understanding, our current requirement to maintain social distancing creates obvious barriers. However, this doesn’t mean our work to ensure we’re meeting people’s needs has to stop. In […]
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How will humans, by nature social animals, fare when isolated? — The Economist
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I have worried about the social and mental health effects of the lockdown measures being implemented. But even I hadn’t anticipated quite how much conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder appear to be common following quarantines. According to a rapid review of the psychological effects of quarantines, published on March 14th in the Lancet, a British […]
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People with mental health conditions say the coronavirus has plunged UK treatment services into crisis — Alex Spence — BuzzFeed News
The effects of coronavirus and the lockdown on people with mental health conditions. I fear that when this pandemic is over, the actual death toll will number far higher than those whose deaths were directly caused by Covid-19. I foresee a mental health crisis with no resources left to deal with it.
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Adapting to the new normal
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One of the (many) strange features of the coronavirus outbreak is that in many ways I feel busier than I have ever been. It is almost three weeks since I was last in my office, yet I haven’t had the time to commit my thoughts to writing.
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Virtual birthday party — 9pm tonight
Virtual birthday party — 9pm tonight It’s my birthday today. But I couldn’t really be bothered to organise a physical get-together. Instead, I thought it would be fun to imagine there was some horrific virus that meant we couldn’t really leave the house much, and I had to celebrate it remotely. Update: This will now take […]
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I’m in Ikea, where lots of people are buying emergency desks
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I’m in Ikea, where lots of people are buying emergency desks.