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Your round-up of design thinking news and opportunities, to improve your practice.

Welcome to Design Thoughts! I’m Charlotte, a freelance service designer. This newsletter is a round-up of thoughts, news and opportunities.

🥳 Decentering work: an ongoing process

While I was on holiday I started reading Simone Stolzoff’’s book: ‘The Good Enough Job: What We Gain When We Don’t Put Work First’. I also read a bit of ‘No Hard Feelings: Emotions at Work and How They Help Us Succeed’ by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy.

Away from my big old project and getting some wisdom from these books allowed me to get a little bit of healthy distance from my work. These are the insights I gained:

Most people actually work to live, rather than live to work

From Simone Stolzoff’s book I learned that professional culture treats work as the central axis around which the rest of life orbits, but the majority of workers in the world do not necessarily find deep meaning in their work; they work to survive. Another point is that some of us (although of course not all) are non-religious. This leaves a theological hole in our lives - we search for meaning somewhere other than the synagogue, mosque or church, and accidentally find it in the office.

Don’t extend the logic of the workplace to your time off

‘No Hard Feelings’ points out that many people are overly enthusiastic about optimising their free time. They suggest that if you love playing piano (or in my case the recorder) don’t force yourself to practise for thirty minutes at precisely 8.00pm every weeknight then beat yourself up when you miss a go. Studies show that when we mathematicize our experiences - by measuring miles hiked for instance - we don’t enjoy them as much.

Our work might actually improve if we cared less

There’s something about taking a step back from a project, that allows you to see the bigger picture of what you’re doing. Whenever I sit down to update my portfolio I feel daunted by the task, but I’m also surprised by how much I’ve created. Taking a bit of time out for life outside of work, gives the perspective we all need. But of course the point of decentering work is to improve life, rather than improve our work output!

Some kind of balance

When we work to fulfil our purpose, and we look to work to motivate and fulfil us - settling for anything less can feel like failure. But the antidote is not as simple as to not care about our jobs, when we spend so much time there. The question is, how to balance the pursuit of meaningful work with the risk of letting your job subsume who you are. One thought I have here is that time expands and contracts according to what’s going on. If I plan to cook in the evening, work has to end. Perhaps pursuing fun activities outside of work will mean I end up with more leisure and down-time, rather than waiting for work to be less busy to pursue fun things.

In the news

🎉 Over in the USA, a billboard goes up declaring drag artist bans unconstitutional. I enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek nature of this piece of graphic design. Despite the terrible idea that the USA might ban drag performance - which seems completely ridiculous. They pointed out that the declaration of indepence was written by men in wigs, heels and tights. This campaign was designed by the UK's own Uncommon Studio. Source​

🍃The most sustainable building projects do not start from scratch. We've all seen big ego projects where architects claim to create huge net zero buildings - but what about the ecological footprint of construction? Adaptive reuse is a massive win for the climate. Source​

Opportunities

Yes we're de-centering work, but you may still need a job and a salary each month!

Freelance User Researcher

Chayn, supporting survivors of abuse across borders

£200-£400, 80 hours between July-Dec 2023

​Apply here​

Content Designer

NHS Blood and Transplant Service

£35,392 to £42,618 a year

Based in Bristol

​Apply here​

Senior Service Designer

Government Digital Service

£50,694 - £65,600 a year

Flexible and hybrid working

​Apply here​

Freelance UX Designer

Prorizon, startup focused on health optimisation for athletes

6 month contract

​Apply here​