Hex

Today has not been easy. In fleshing out the detail of this project lots of hitherto unrecognised issues have come to the surface. The users themselves have been confused and slightly overwhelmed by the complexity of their processes. There have been different opinions and different solutions proposed. Finally, at the very end of the afternoon, clarity began to emerge. It's required a bit of lateral thinking and the re-framing of a number of key concepts, but I think we finally have a design which will support their workflow in a natural way. It's my job now to present this back to them tomorrow and I trust that they will recognise what I show them. If they don't then I'm in trouble!

It's been painful at times and the discussion occasionally quite heated, but it's a process that we have had to work through. I can't really see how you can design software in any other way. It has to be an iterative and collaborative process involving the designer and the users. It's actually a great privilege to be able to gather twenty people together under one roof like this, for three whole days even, in order to cover every aspect of the service. I feel like I can claim to be quite the expert in sexual health practice!

As well as being very hard work, it's also been great fun. We've enjoyed ourselves at the same time and also eaten very well. We're staying at an excellent hotel and they seem to be continually delivering food to us! It's been too good to refuse but I'm sitting here now after dinner totally stuffed!

It's been a generally wet and windy day with very little opportunity to escape. I popped out after lunch for a couple of minutes and caught a rare moment of brightness. I rather like the way the puddles reflected back the tree from which this leaf had fallen. I feel totally drained right now so I'm going to collapese straight into bed. I have to be on form in the morning.