Things I shuffled along

The 3D Secure work continues. Nothing of note to report really, this week was filled with rechecking our delivery plan and making sure we had everything we needed. The research date has moved back by a week but that’s it.

We did whittle our seven design hypotheses down into two though, so that was good. A narrower scope means we should be able to move on to other work in January.

Things I started

Had quite a few conversations with partner services about their needs this week, new features or functionality we could add.

Some puzzles

Having pulled together some top-line KPIs, my colleagues presented these in our check-in with senior management, which was a puzzle from a few weeks ago. I’d like to see how it went.

Other things

I lost steam with NaBloPoMo, but would like to write some more considered posts. Here’s an index of blog posts from National Blog Writing Month 2020.

Ben’s talk with Michael Marriott, the furniture and product designer, about boring magic was really good. It was fun just hearing two people kick about and find inspiration in a phrase that had helped our thoughts crystallise too.

Earlier in the week I was reading William Morris’s lectures on useful work versus useless toil and ‘the lesser arts’, which struck a chord during the talk. When Ben was talking about the open source movement possibly having a place in design, it reminded me of Morris’s talking about decoration, ‘the lesser art’, and how everyone could take a delight in making a bowl. Everyone shares the same basic method but has opportunity to augment and extend as they please.

Then on Thursday I watched the Design Museum’s talk on the spirit of rave, exploring the legacy of rave culture on art and design. It was good, but watching people have a chat over video after you’ve spent several hours doing the same is tiresome. I found myself wanting for the virtual reality experiences mentioned on rave flyers. Wouldn’t it be weird if the one thing that pushed Facebook’s VR experiments into the mainstream was the pandemic. It is actually like we’re living inside a sci-fi plot sometimes. (Read Ubik by the way, I loved it.)

Anyway, I bought a wet suit on Monday and have been swimming twice, so hoping to spend more time outdoors. The sea is wonderful and being tossed about in stormy waters is fun.

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