This year I’ve had the opportunity to participate in a month-long introduction to Design Thinking with work and it’s been a really rewarding experience. There were about twenty of us in total and our focus during the course was to try and find solutions to some of the challenges faced by charities during this pandemic. 

I’m not going to repeat the methodology we used – you can read that elsewhere – but I just wanted to highlight two areas I found really useful. The first was just basic audience research: we were given a series of questions to ask friends/family/people-we’ve-never-really-actually-spoken- to-for-yonks-on-Facebook to find out a) if they donated at all and b) if their perception of charities or general donating behaviour had changed over the last year. We were also asked to note how animated people became when giving feedback on a certain topic and to explore why that might be.

The feedback I got was really varied but there were four main themes that resonated with our group – (a) a general scepticism about the actual impact bigger charities make; (b) an increased emphasis on ‘supporting local’; (c) people wanted very easy ways of donating and (d) people were looking for incentives to donate. Now, all of these points aren’t exactly rocket science but it was really powerful to collect all these opinions ‘direct from the source’ so we could really hear those emotive responses which you just can’t get via a survey.

Anyway, following this initial audience research we brainstormed a number of possible solutions then agreed as a group on a top three that we would take forward to the prototype stage, finally selecting one for our final ‘pitch.’ One of my ideas did not make it to the final round – and that was because it became very complex, very quickly.

I wanted crate a funny version of the Bear Grylls show on Netflix ‘You vs The Wild.‘ This has a basic story arc: you have to help Grylls to get from A-B and on the way there 4 or 5 ‘either/or’ decisions you have to make. I wanted to take this model and apply it to a ‘Make your own Charity promo video’ scenario – you would choose between a number of good and very bad decisions in the creation of your promo video. Instead of helping Bear Grylls, you would be helping a well-known funny celebrity personality who would be trying at all times, to get you to select one of the bad decisions. The point of the whole exercise would be that you’d something learn about the challenges charities have faced during the pandemic, the value a charity can bring to those in need PLUS it would all be hilarious resulting in a final video that could be shared on the socials.*

To be fair, even as i typed that paragraph I reminded myself that that even a simple ‘Choose A/Choose B’ format can quickly become complex, especially if you’re trying tick off a number of objectives in addition. I started to draft the script but then quickly realised I had to sketch out the whole scenario from beginning to end to make any sense of it. And when I started to do that, I realised I had to get feedback on the structure and the whole project in general – in short, I had to sketch a wireframe prototype, discuss with others, making quick amendments as I bounced from zoom call to zoom call. I think with more available time, I would have eventually refined the model into a decent state – but we had a hard deadline to hit so I had to ditch it.

Anyway, my key learn from the whole exercise was simply this: if you have an idea that you think could work, but as you discuss it, it starts to feel complex – sketch it out. The very act of a sketch invites feedback and suggestions for improvements. Confront the unforeseen challenges early in your project and that will save you a lot of time further down the line!

Also, I humbly salute anyone out there creating any kind of visual project – especially if you have to deal with people like me who say things like ‘hey, this would make a cool video, should be pretty easy to do, right?’

For that, you win all the gold stars.

*During this project I never actually said ‘this video will be hilarious’ simply because when people say ‘this will be hilarious’ you can guarantee it won’t be.

I wanted to write a few words now that we’ve had a year of living with this pandemic. In many ways I wish I’d kept a diary just like Eno did for a completely different reason but, unlike Eno, my thoughts over the last year have been a chaotic mess with me in the middle flip-flopping from one project to the next. After the brief euphoria of being able to paint my garden fence during my lunch break, the sad realisation slowly crept in – I was going to be looking at that fence for an awfully long time. Cue endless cups of tea and tying to figure out what was coming next.

I didn’t have to wait long.

It was early March and my wife became ill for four days with heavy ‘flu-like symptoms’. At that time we were still unsure where or even how she could get tested – and then I started to feel unwell. I remember sitting watching the TV with the kids and then feeling so tired it was a real effort just to stand up. Eventually, I went to bed, sweated a lot and listened to a 5th century Welsh folk tale all about dying and going to hell – which wasn’t ideal at the time. When I woke up, I felt a bit groggy but logged into work as usual. What then followed was about seven days of feeling increasingly ‘meh’ until I finally crashed and spent an entire Saturday in bed listening to all the Brian & Roger podcasts. I find that all a bit funny now but, back then, it was more than a little surreal.

When I recovered, I made a promise to myself that I would do everything I could to try and stay fit just in case I got ill again. This has resulted in an awful lot of running – in fact I’ve now clocked up about 1500 miles which makes me your stereotypical Forest Gump. But, do you know what the most difficult part of this has been? It’s seeing the scared faces of other people as you’re running because they’re afraid you might not give them a wide berth. Fortunately, I live in the countryside so I can put about a field between me and you – but I don’t go running now without one of those running-neck-warmer-thingies so I can use as an impromptu face mask. I think the immortal words ‘Strange Times’ are reverberating all around these leafy glades – I wonder what Kenneth Grahame would have made of it all?

Speaking of which, another thing that has changed over the year has been my desire to write a book – all of that has gone completely out of the window. Before the pandemic hit I was really motivated – I went to all the writer classes, read a lot of those ‘How To Be A Writer’ books, listened to a lot of ‘How To Write a Bestseller’ podcasts (actually, that one’s quite good) and generally bored a lot of people with the “well, it’s about this teenager in this medieval fantasy world who triggers a multiverse calamity when he starts meddling with magic and ends up in Hounslow in 1991″ spiel. But then, covid kicked off and I started to feel that anything outside of the core requirements (like working or being with the family) was pointless. Thinking about it now, it might just have been an excuse I told myself to escape the whole process. Either way, I gave up.

But it did get a little better. One day I was watching something on YouTube and really went down this rabbit hole about how to make music with Ableton. I’d dabbled with the software before but now it all looked a lot more easier and the computers didn’t crash. Fantastic. Now, I’m pulling what little hair I have out to try get a decent stereo mix and decide on the right kind of synthesiser – it’s like I’m trapped in an episode of Flight of the Conchords…

Still, it’s been a lot of fun. There’s nothing like trying to solve a problem that you alone have created and you alone can fix – partly because everyone else is bored with the incessant ’dist – dist – dist’ coming from your headphones and  – no – they don’t want to listen to another version of your track which you think ‘sounds a bit like INX.’ 

Anyway, this all brings me to my main point. There must be so many people out there right now creating great music, or learning to cook, or code or even sculpt pottery goddamn it – I just hope that we’ll all have the chance to share what we’ve learned. Maybe 2022 will become the ‘Year of the Amateur’ – where there’s going to be absolutely no dance shaming and if someone wants to read their poem about fish then let them go straight ahead and read that poem about fish.

I for one will see you at the front of the crowd, waiting patiently for you to echo your first words – albeit perfectly sealed in my floating bubble like a scene from The Prisoner.

Until then.

My daughter was recently listening to the brilliant Writer’s Routine podcast and mentioned a book written by Jaroslav Kalfař called ‘Spaceman of Bohemia.’ I was so intrigued by the storyline I bought the book immediately. A Czech astronaut heads into space to explore a mysterious dust cloud and ends up going mad (or does he?) after meeting a intergalactic philosopher spider with a serious addiction to Nutella -what’s not to love?

It should have a been a brilliant book, I wanted it to be brilliant – but, alas no. There’s a merger of Czech political history with a failed personal relationship and it’s all a bit of a tangle. It would, undoubtedly, make an excellent Netflix movie however, someone give Ben Whishaw and Andy Serkis a call. Oh, and Nigel Warburton would do a decent voice-over as the furry theoretician. Oscars here we come.