Tom’s blog

Monthnotes and reflections

Monthnotes Sept/Oct

Monthnotes
Research Operations
Incentives
Tools
User Needs
Participant Recruitment
My highlight of the month outside of work was a weekend away with our running club in the lakes, getting an 5km Parkun PB at Keswick, ascending Catbells for the first time.
Oct 4, 2024
Tom Hallam

 

Weeknotes 12/09/24

Weeknotes
Research Operations
Inclusivity
Research Panels
Research Repo
Tools
User Needs
UR Finder
Research lab
Looking back over the last week or so, quite a lot has progressed – even more than expected… always a nice surprise after picking up the back to school / freshers flu last…
Sep 12, 2024
Tom Hallam

Monthnotes: End of July 2024

Monthnotes
Research Operations
AI
Inclusivity
Research Panels
Research Repo
Tools
User Needs
Ways of Working
Culture Change
Research lab
So I fell off the weeknote bandwagon and have been struggling to find time and the headspace to jump back on… reflecting, like running, needs to be a routine. Commit. Little…
Aug 8, 2024
Tom Hallam

Weeknotes: 6 May 2024

Weeknotes
Research Operations
AI
Culture Change
Community
CI
Capability
Six! months ago (Nov 23) I attended the AI Innovation Away Day in Leeds hosted by one of the NHS tech suppliers. It was really fascinating to hear about all the different…
May 6, 2024
Tom Hallam

Weeknotes: Breathtaking, AI and Recruitment

Weeknotes
Research Operations
Hiring
AI
Service Design
Information Governance
Research Repo
Many colleagues are thinking about (and fascinated by) AI. The excitement is fading away… the reality is… AI isn’t a super-simple solution… cost, time, brainpower..…
Apr 26, 2024
Tom Hallam

AI to the rescue

Research Operations
User-Centred Design
Culture Change
Tools
AI
UR Repo
‘Artificial intelligence’ isn’t really a good description for how these tools are being deployed. ‘Automation, supported by natural language processing’ is a better albeit…
Mar 1, 2024
Tom Hallam

Monthnotes: Spring Cleaning and BAU

Monthnotes
Personal
Wellbeing
Hospital
Research Operations
Community
Data
Culture Change
Knowledge Management
Leadership
Ways of Working
Information Governance
AI
I had the opportunity to conduct some unplanned fieldwork this week, and made a few observations around frontline services…
Feb 28, 2024
Tom Hallam

Weeknotes: Recruitment and onboarding

Weeknotes
Research Operations
Hiring
Ways of Working
Information Governance
Research Repo
We still have a huge number of open positions for permanent vacancies across all UCD, this week focus on Senior Researchers, and Lead Service designers.
Feb 23, 2024
Tom Hallam

Weeknotes: sprinting through January

Research Operations
User-Centred Design
Culture Change
Knowledge Management
Leadership
Reporting
Ways of Working
Information Governance
Surveys
Weeknotes
Some hangovers from last year, it feels like unfinished business… or reopening a can of worms.
Jan 12, 2024
Tom Hallam

Exploring the impact of adhoc requests

Research Operations
User-Centred Design
Culture Change
Capability
CI
Data
Discovery
Knowledge Management
Leadership
Planning
Product Management
Reporting
Service Design
User Experience
Ways of Working
This post follows on from my recent monthnotes.
Nov 15, 2023
Tom Hallam

Monthnotes October 2023

Research Operations
Research incentives
Seldom-heard
Research Panels
User-Centred Design
Inclusivity
Culture Change
Community
Capability
These are quite late now… but always good to finish what you started…
Nov 4, 2023
Tom Hallam

Research incentives and inclusion

Research Operations
Research incentives
Seldom-heard
Research Panels
User-Centred Design
Inclusivity
Culture Change
Community
Capability
We’ve heard lots of X-Gov Re-Ops collegues are having similar discussions about incentives
Sep 22, 2023
Tom Hallam

Weeknotes: Ear infection and end of holidays rush

Weeknotes
Research Lab
UCD Maturity
Staff Panel
No weeknotes last week due to a few days absent recovering from an ear infection ‘swimmers ear’; why do they have lane swimming right after kids swimming lessons… so gross!
Sep 8, 2023
Tom Hallam

Weeknotes: a week off and productivity

Weeknotes
Research Lab
UCD Maturity
Staff Panel
When things are challenging or busy at work, it is too easy to forget to take a break and crack on, have another coffee. I know when I’m feeling overcooked as my regular…
Aug 18, 2023
Tom Hallam

End of year review

Monthnotes
Research Lab
UCD Maturity
The last year has been very challenging both at work and outside of work. I started my current role in June 2022 and this post wraps up some of the things over the last year.
Jun 8, 2023
Tom Hallam

Visit to A&E

User Research
Healthcare
Digital
Hospital
Bookings
User Needs
Personal
Dramatic end to a crazy busy week
Apr 1, 2023
Tom Hallam

Urgent digital healthcare: are we out of touch?

User Research
Healthcare
Digital
Hospital
Bookings
User Needs
Personal
People are what make healthcare work. There is a human role in every good bit of the experience
Mar 30, 2023
Tom Hallam

UCD Capability: Hiring Specialists or Generalists?

Hiring
Capability
User Research
Service Design
Interaction Design
Content Design
UCD Maturity
Research Operations
This post is about how teams (in the NHS or gov) can mature their User-Centred Design (UCD) capability. It outlines some commons challenges, decisions and risks that should…
Feb 23, 2023
Tom Hallam

User Research Lab Launched!

Weeknotes
Research Lab
UCD Maturity
It was great work by Rochelle, Allan and Ellen to organise this event!
Nov 18, 2022
Tom Hallam

6 months into Lead UR Role

CI
UCD Maturity
Knowledge Management
Surveys
Research Lab
TL;DR This post covers my reflections 6-months into the new UCD-Lead / Lead User Researcher role
Nov 11, 2022
Tom Hallam

Weeknotes - 2 November 2022

Weeknotes
Research Lab
Research Panels
The Leeds User Research Lab. Everything is in place to launch this venue for our colleagues to use very soon. It has been a real long road, with so many hurdles to overcome;…
Nov 2, 2022
Tom Hallam

Weeknotes - 26 October 2022

Weeknotes
UCD Maturity
Allyship
Research Panels
We’ve been working hard to increase awareness of the User Centred-Design Maturity Model, Self-Review Workshops, and Community of Practice. Things were abit slow over the…
Oct 26, 2022
Tom Hallam

Welcome to my (new) Blog

Weeknotes
Personal
This is the first post in my new Quarto blog. Welcome!
Oct 24, 2022
Thomas Hallam

User research away day

User Research
Community
Research Panels
Today we saw some brilliant facilitation by the hosts Jordan and Michelle. A difficult tech set up to connect several sites, avoiding inevitable audible feedback loops…
Jul 7, 2022
Tom Hallam

Help dealing with being retraumatised

Personal
Trigger warning: note this article includes content the might be a mental health trigger. Click here to return to the front page.
Jul 4, 2022
Tom Hallam

Being a solo dad

Personal
TL;DR
Jun 29, 2022
Tom Hallam

New team, new role, new priorities

User Research
Research Operations
UCD Maturity
Knowledge Management
User-Centred Design
I’m very excited to have joined the Central User-Centred Design team at NHS Digital, working with Rochelle, Tero, Eva and the Central Re-Ops team.
Jun 5, 2022
Tom Hallam

Last week on Covid Testing

User Research
Covid Testing
Healthcare
Stakeholders
This week is my last week on Covid Testing programme after 2 years 3 months (since March 2020)!
May 8, 2022
Tom Hallam

Hiring user researchers for healthcare

Hiring
User Research
Healthcare
Research in healthcare or govevernment can be quite dangerous if not done properly:
Mar 17, 2022
Tom Hallam

Crossing the chasm between SUR and LUR level

Monthnotes
Personal
This is a post about my recent experience working as a Senior User Researcher on Covid Testing, and as an interim-role taking on some new Lead User Research responsibilities.
Feb 28, 2022
Tom Hallam

Monthnotes 27 October

Monthnotes
Personal
Covid Testing
Healthcare
Wellbeing
COP26 starts very soon, yes there will be testing. Over the past 3 weeks our team have been collaborating on and testing various digital service design proposals. The…
Oct 27, 2021
Tom Hallam

Where’s Tom at?

Monthnotes
Personal
Covid Testing
Healthcare
So I have been a bit ill the last 3 weeks: first it was a terrible eye infection (lasting 5 days, requiring 3 different eye solutions!), then followed by a…
Sep 26, 2021
Tom Hallam

Getting started with analytics

User Research
Analytics
Usability
Covid Testing
Tools
“you can’t have analytics now because it takes too long to install”
May 3, 2021
Tom Hallam

Discovery Sprint!

User Research
Discovery
Sprint
Covid Testing
The last round of research I delivered was in January, since then our amazing team of User Researchers have been ploughing ahead delivering great projects and new insights…
Apr 24, 2021
Tom Hallam

Senior user researcher in a nutshell

Healthcare
Leadership
User Research
The full job description for the role I perform is something like 20 pages! To summarise this in 120 characters was a nightmarish task for the Census 2021.
Mar 21, 2021
Tom Hallam

Whatever happened to healthcare discovery?

Digital
Discovery
Healthcare
After graduating with an International Business degree from a great uni I had high ambitions. However it was 2009 and the global financial crisis had just hit everything…
Mar 11, 2021
Tom Hallam

Research with seldom-heard user groups

Seldom-heard
Inclusivity
Gender
Discovery
Covid Testing
Before reading ahead, please be aware some people may find some of this content upsetting.
Dec 8, 2020
Tom Hallam

Scaled Up Unmoderated Testing

Analytics
Tools
Usability
Covid Testing
The journey had so many screens to test, that even with 90-minute interviews we struggled to get robust consistent feedback over multiple rounds of testing This post is…
Dec 6, 2020
Tom Hallam

Always Improving

CI
Culture Change
Data
Leadership
Reporting
Ways of Working
Covid Testing
Stakeholders on any critical programme are typically very busy, some key decision makers will only have time to attend a ‘kick off’ meeting and ‘debrief meeting/Show and…
Dec 1, 2020
Tom Hallam

Interacting with design

Culture Change
Capability
Interaction Design
Service Design
Usability
Leadership
Covid Testing
What is a prototype for?
Nov 6, 2020
Tom Hallam

User research day in the life

User Research
Usability Testing
Referrals
Stakeholders
User-Centred Design
Selling your wares - working in an organisation with low user-centred design maturity and teams where no one knows what you do, how you can fit into the processes, how can…
Mar 10, 2020
Tom Hallam

The case for patient-centred bookings and referrals

User Needs
User Research
Patients
Referrals
Discovery
User Experience
Hi I’m Tom — i’ve been working at NHS Digital as a User Researcher on the NHS referrals transformation project since 2015.
Mar 5, 2020
Tom Hallam

Usability testing when choice is constrained

User Research
Usability Testing
Referrals
“I’ve been told not to click that button.”
May 24, 2019
Tom Hallam

User Needs vs. Value Proposition thinking

User Needs
User Research
User Experience
Product Management
I’ve seen teams design lovely journeys and content but not understanding what is the core thing they do that adds value for their users.
May 23, 2019
Tom Hallam

Product People - When stakeholders attack!

User Research
User-Centred Design
Product Management
Stakeholders
As a User Researcher working in the NHS, it seems every project I have been involved in over 4 years has had ample stakeholders (internal and external) lobbying to influence…
Feb 9, 2019
Tom Hallam

Letting go!

Culture Change
CI
Planning
Releasing control.
Oct 12, 2017
Tom Hallam

Little Things Matter

Beta
User Research
Referrals
Patients
Content Design
Interaction Design
Today we found out that a simple change the team made to a patient letter will possibly save the NHS about £500k per year!
Sep 22, 2017
Tom Hallam

Stakeholders are not our users

Stakeholders
User Research
Referrals
Patients
Stakeholders are great. But they are not our users.
Sep 20, 2017
Tom Hallam

We don’t need user research

Product Management
User Research
Planning
Service Design
Just some wild things that were said today…
Sep 18, 2017
Tom Hallam

Ponderings on Private Beta

Beta
User Research
Planning
Hi all, I’ve been asked my by PO to put out a request about what a good private beta looks like in terms of size, ramp up etc? I would think it would vary from service to…
Sep 12, 2017
Tom Hallam

What is a Pre-Discovery?

Discovery
User Research
Planning
Pre-Discovery is helpful for teams working on existing products and services where data can be gathered from internal resources. It should underpin the User Research…
Sep 11, 2017
Tom Hallam
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