# The Pembroke Dock

> This week I joined the Innovation & Analysis team in Digital Prevention Services at NHS England.

> Last updated: 2026-05-15

New week, new work.

This week I joined the Innovation & Analysis team in Digital Prevention Services at NHS England. I’m doing product stuff on Managing my health, which aims to keep people healthier for longer and help them find hidden problems early through the NHS App.

The team is full of people who excel at their craft. There’s so much good, clear thinking happening in a complex space. It’s been so helpful following [Ralph’s weeknotes](https://ralphhawkins.co.uk/notes-list/) the last few months. 

It’s a unique product and design challenge. The goal is not to start from zero and create something brand new. Instead it’s about coalescing existing services into a new whole, shifting from transactional flows of value to a relational cycle. It’s [_bricolage_](https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/b/bricolage) (though our material is not junk).

We’re doing rhizomatic service design and product strategy. There isn’t a clear path to a solution and we’re bringing together some existing services into a new, networked whole. It’s driven by emergence, and we have light criteria on which signals are worth following, which to avoid. Crossing the river by feeling the stones.

It’s a deliberate refusal to plan an ‘uber mega architecture’ and golden-bullet strategy. We’re starting small and iterating, proving value as soon as possible. 

There is a need to think inside a few pace layers, calling out what changes to architecture, organisations, markets or policy will enable more value to be delivered in future. Just because something hasn’t been done yet doesn’t mean it’s not possible. 

Most importantly, we must respect other teams, their work, their responsibilities and what they’re doing. We don’t own anything, but also we can’t make things better for users without the support of other teams. 

I suspect we’ll craft as many principles, patterns and connective tissues as much as we’ll materialise ‘a thing’.

We are not the NHS App team, therefore we obviously need to partner up with them. Which is bloody excellent because I get to work alongside [James](https://jiggott.medium.com/) and [Mike](https://mikegallagher.org/) way more! It also means contributing to a [new way of working](https://mikegallagher.org/posts/becoming-everyones-problem/#:~:text=This%20is%20a-,new%20way%20of%20working,-and%20we%20haven%E2%80%99t) and processes that mean they won’t be a bottleneck, distributing agency and responsibility across the teams. 

I’m privileged to be working with other superstars too: [Rose](https://medium.com/@mortada), [Duncan](https://mechanicalsurvival.com), [Giles](https://gilest.org), [Oli](https://snufkinstravels.wordpress.com), [Alistair](https://www.alistairuff.com), Emily and other people who I’ve not met properly yet. 

Thanks to Emily, Duncan and Mark for bringing me in.

A short week zero with 2 days on the job. A train is taking me west to spend the weekend with a friend in Pembrokeshire. Looking forward to Monday, though.

Ciao for now.

## Bookmarks

- **[What is Managing my health?](https://design-history.prevention-services.nhs.uk/managing-my-health/2026/04/what-is-managing-my-health/), 3 mins.** The design history for the new thing.
- **[“Language and Image Minus Cognition”: An Interview with Leif Weatherby](https://www.jhiblog.org/2025/06/11/language-and-image-minus-cognition-an-interview-with-leif-weatherby/), 20 mins.** Fascinating interview. Dr. Leif Weatherby discusses his book, *Language Machines*, which explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) separate cognition from language. He argues that current AI research is misguided by ‘remainder humanism’, which overlooks the structuralist view of language. Weatherby calls for a new approach that combines literary theory with cognitive science to understand language and computation better.
- **[TB871: Bricolage, rigour, and service design](https://blog.dougbelshaw.com/tb871-bricolage-and-rigour-2/), 9 mins.** Great write-up on bricolage by open-working legend Doug Belshaw.
- [We need RSS for sharing abundant vibe-coded apps](https://interconnected.org/home/2026/04/29/syndicating-vibes), 5 mins
- [Making your site visible to LLMs: 6 techniques that work, 8 that don't](https://evilmartians.com/chronicles/how-to-make-your-website-visible-to-llms), 16 mins
- [Attention is All We Need: On Leif Weatherby’s Language Machines](https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/08/attention-is-all-we-need-on-leif-weatherbys-language-machines.html), 21 mins
- [A vision of the nation’s political future in Croydon’s concrete jungle](https://www.thetimes.com/article/f409b3b2-e716-4028-bf0e-0beb1395fd74?shareToken=c4ae125113102d4ec783d2de40123014), 8 mins
- [From garbage can to compost heap](https://mikegallagher.org/posts/from-garbage-can-to-compost-heap/), 7 mins
- [The AI Compute Crunch Is Here (and It's Affecting the Entire Economy)](https://www.404media.co/the-ai-compute-crunch-is-here-and-its-affecting-the-entire-economy/), 5 mins
- [High earners race ahead on AI as workplace divide widens](https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/7834dc3d-9767-414d-91f1-40b52ac704ff), 6 mins
- [Emergent Learning](https://forgetfulnotes.com/Concepts/Emergent-Learning), 2 mins
- [Community as Curriculum](https://forgetfulnotes.com/Concepts/Community-as-Curriculum), 2 mins
- [Apple CEO Tim Cook to hand over to John Ternus in September](https://www.ft.com/content/5b5a466c-fc48-429d-b505-2c81d87e3615?shareType=nongift), 4 mins
- [Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want](https://www.theverge.com/tldr/915176/nft-metaverse-ai-weirdos?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IjRHS0tSZlVhc1kiLCJwIjoiL3RsZHIvOTE1MTc2L25mdC1tZXRhdmVyc2UtYWktd2VpcmRvcyIsImV4cCI6MTc3NzE0OTA2MiwiaWF0IjoxNzc2NzE3MDYyfQ.EAgdP89HSvutFYY7JaKPeIcIGHNwdBFWPfAonGlY6lY&utm_medium=gift-link), 15 mins
- [Friends Don't Let Friends Use Ollama](https://sleepingrobots.com/dreams/stop-using-ollama/), 12 mins
- [What does firm-level data tell us about AI adoption in the UK?](https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/ai-adoption-in-the-uk/), 7 mins
- [Euphoria season three review – grubby, desperate and absolutely not worth the wait](https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/apr/13/euphoria-season-three-review-sydney-sweeney-zendaya-hbo), 5 mins
- [Ellwood, C. (2009). Listening to homeless young people. In B. Davies & S. Gannon (Eds.), Pedagogical Encounters (pp. 31–52). New York, NY: Peter Lang.](https://www.inthemidst.ca/post/rhizomatic-learning), 5 mins
- [RHIZOMATIC TIME – Exhibition in collaboration with RUFA](https://www.re-humanism.com/news/rhizomatic-time-exhibition-in-collaboration-with-rufa/), 3 mins
- [Rhizomatic Learning](https://forgetfulnotes.com/Concepts/Rhizomatic-Learning), 2 mins
- [What is a ‘rhizome’ in Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking?](https://thoughtleader.co.za/what-is-a-rhizome-in-deleuze-and-guattaris-thinking/), 6 mins
- [Towards a Rhizomatic Future](https://farsight.cifs.dk/towards-a-rhizomatic-future/), 8 mins
- [All projects (and services) start in the middle](https://www.effortmark.co.uk/all-projects-and-services-start-in-the-middle/?utm_campaign=software-is-a-coordination-problem-ai-can-t-help-you-with-that&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=productpicnic.beehiiv.com), 5 mins
- [Forget the org chart. Start with delivery.](https://www.katherinewastell.com/blog/2025/10/1/forget-the-org-chart-start-with-delivery), 3 mins
- [Win the space to design services](https://grillopress.github.io/2021/03/19/win-space-to-design.html), 2 mins
- [The future is what you think it is](https://sarahdrummond.medium.com/the-future-is-what-you-think-it-is-d7a54369ea32), 15 mins