Weeknotes 28 March 2024

Slightly early this week, as we have a symmetrical line up of bank holidays fast approaching. It’s #weeknotes no 5.

• Drafted 4 new articles for DACS’ brilliant new advice section for artists, creators, beneficiaries and art market professionals. DACS are currently celebrating 40 years of licensing art, and I was a little bowled over to actually be working on topic matter directly connected with one of my favourite music groups.
• In an effort towards marketing, last week if you remember I’d set up a Spring offer for my UCD and content design courses: half-price when you buy both together, at a total of £47.50 (with SPRING24). Sophie Dennis reposted commenting: “Is this the best value UX and content design training on the market? Quite possibly… ” Thank you Sophie!
• A Digital Services Manager from a local council asked if the offer coupon code applied when you buy the both the training courses for a colleague: so I’ve set up a matching code for that too now: SPRING24C. Thank you for the idea!
• With the marketing hat still on, I made my business’s offer messaging stronger on the website homepage. And repurposed the About page content as ‘Why you should choose to work with us’.
• Missed the event, but absorbed the excellent slide content from Caroline Jarrett’s talk on  Using surveys to uncover audience insights for Scott Abel’s ‘Coffee and content’. Cheekily reached out to him to see if Cake may also go well with those.
• Shared the LocalGov Drupal site on the Cake Content Consultancy page on LinkedIn for insights, news and jobs. The site has really come on since I lasted looked! Localgovdrupal.org is for councils, by councils – who share, code, research, resources and more. Such a great idea.
• Interesting chats about user need assumptions at prototype stage. My input was that at least desktop user research should be carried out when there are several user tasks to prioritise. “You are not the user”, so it’s hard to judge what is the most important thing for someone who is not you, even if you really think you know. Understanding the proportions of users with different priorities takes research – sometimes these may change depending on other variables. Plus, business goals and ethical design need to factor in too.
• Enjoyed Beatrix Holland’s blog post on The Value of Cospa for Rice Press. ‘Cospa’ is, as she puts it, one of the best Japanese portmanteau words – of combined katakana that is, as it combines 2 foreign (non-Japanese) words. I particularly like the publication’s translation layout choice of dual languages paragraph by paragraph.
• Found a website listing museums open in the evening in Paris and enjoyed the Mode et Sport/Fashion and Sport exhibition. Amusingly, what I was wearing matched what was deemed appropriate for a 1930s tennis outfit (a dress, almost to the knee, with a cardigan).

Happy Easter, chicks! 🐥
Lizzie, Lead consultant, Cake Content Consultancy