Paul Moran

This year is a 1. for me 😭

Interesting evening hearing @glider.bsky.social speak about the art history of Studio Ghibli in Nottingham

Sketchbook illustrations of chess pieces using watercolour inks. The pieces are a pawn, a knight, a rook, a king, a bishop and a queen.

Sketchbook illustrations of a chess piece King using watercolour inks.

Sketchbook illustrations of a chess piece Queen using watercolour inks.

Sketchbook illustrations of a chess piece Bishop using watercolour inks.

Had some more sketchbook fun with my new watercolour inks. Chess pieces this time. Have gone done well with our resident grandmaster #chess #illustration #sketchbook #watercolour

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Three watercolour ink paints across two pages of an A4 sketchbook. One of a stone gateway in Nin, one of buildings in Zadar and one of the waterfalls at Krka national park, all in Croatia

Four collage pictures of fruit across two A4 sketchbook pages. A slice of watermelon, a cherry, 3 pears, and an orange segment

Had a lovely day exploring new materials and techniques in a sketchbook workshop today. Was a delightful way to have a bit of time for me, even better that it was a gift.

Love to know more about this one…

Excuse me while I dedicate some of my evening attempting to peel stickers from my recently departed laptop #RIP

In a David Attenborough whisper…“But not alllll will survive…”

Book titled: User Friendly: how the hidden rules of design are changing the way we live, work, and play by Cliff Kuang with Robert Fabricant

Enjoying this at the moment

If you see this post, post or quote repost a bridge from your photography or artwork. (Thanks for sparking the memory @erikahall.bsky.social )

Designing at pace at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) In this blog post, senior service designer Alex Lee documents the design decisions that helped a team deliver an emergency service in just 34 days.

We did this during Covid. Worked well for us at the time designnotes.blog.gov.uk/2021/04/29/d...

A blueprint for modern digital government (HTML)

Pleased to see the blueprint for modern digital government published, and looking forward to working with colleagues across government to bring it to life www.gov.uk/government/p...

A watercolour and ink picture of a robin standing on a small log

Had the watercolour pencils and my pens out again recently making this festive robin as a christmas gift. Birds seem to come out quite well, nice to spend some time in creative mode

So great to see this finally go live on GOV.UK over the weekend. Great collaborative effort across departments to move us all forward

Couldn’t have done it without @tonytoners.bsky.social 🙌

Paul Moran: The Design Whisperer of Bluesky A blend of creative candor and strategic insights that makes his followers both thoughtful and thirsty for confectionery. Paul's Bluesky is like a thoughtful conversation with a friend who occasionally throws in a candy bar reference just to keep things sweet.

That’s a big call based on limited data 😆

Two pink coconut liquorice allsorts, one which has liquorice in the centre, one which is all coconut

Call yourself an allsort? I’m not sure this is up there with a pure chocolate kitkat finger in the pantheon of confectionary errors, but is one I’ve never seen before. Now you’ve seen it too…

Photo of a green post-it with a hand drawn sketch. The sketch shows a horizontal arrow with the words ‘E2E experience’. Underneath is a vertical arrow with the words ‘E2E org design + op model’.

Photo of a green post-it with a hand drawn sketch. The sketch shows 4 overlapping circles of different sizes. Inside the circles it says ‘Create an account’, ‘Order a card’, ‘Manage your finances’ and ‘Get financial advice’.

Photo of a green post-it with a hand drawn sketch. The sketch shows a cluster of 4 circles, with arrows going round the outside. It says ‘E2E customer experience’.

Why do so many strategic initiatives fail?

Too often, organisations focus entirely on the target customer experience, without thinking about how they’ll make it real. They want to create a new experience, but their operating model holds them back.

Design Leadership Chronicles by Marzia Aricò book resting on an armchair

A frame from the book with an image of a designer and a thought bubble “WOW, THE STRETCH BETWEEN THE SUPER STRATEGIC AND THE INCREDIBLY TACTICAL IS SO HARSH.”

An image from the book of a team looking at a visual on a wall, with one person saying “THIS MAKES A LOT OF SENSE. I HAVE NEVER SEEN IT SHOWN LIKE THIS.”

A frame from the book with two people speaking to each other. One is saying “WEVE COMPLETED THE SERVICE MAP, OUTLINING HOW THE JOURNEYS CONNECT. THESE ARE THE KEY CUSTOMER JOURNEYS TO FOCUS ON BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE SIGNIFICANT OPPORTUNITIES LIE.” The other is responding “OK, I WANT TO PRIORITISE THOSE AREAS THAT HAVE THE HIGHEST IMPACT ON CUSTOMERS AND EMPLOYEES.”

Design Leadership Chronicles by Marzia Aricò landed this weekend. Very relatable and love the graphic novel format. The first three stories are all incredibly relevant to me at the moment.

One of those days when you can only thank people - friends who knew CPR, paramedics who can defib, pilots who fly helicopters, and the hospital staff able to do everything that follows.
Now to get on the road and visit my bro after his adventure yesterday 😵‍💫

Thanks Ian, looks interesting

A classic, which I’ve put in front of people at various points to help bring it to life. Thanks for resharing the link

Thanks @pauloneill79.bsky.social 👍

Ultimately trying to help people who need to make decisions about a service, and prioritise where the money and effort go, to see a richer picture to inform those decisions 3/3

Thinking that end to end service maps and more detailed customer journeys can help navigate from systems thinking space eg causal loops, into where interventions could be explored. Then working with something like COM-B to explore those intervention spaces. 2/n

Currently thinking about systems maps, service maps and customer journey maps and how they help describe the terrain of a service in different but related ways. Can anyone point to examples of systems mapping and service/journey mapping usefully done together? 1/n

A watercolour and ink painting of two lovebirds nestled together on a branch

This is why the watercolour pencils and ink pens have been out recently. Celebrating 30 years together with Mrs M this year.

Nice to have the watercolour pencils and ink pens out again. Been too long. Bird picture on its way but not ready to share yet.

How can we design greener policies? Designer Becky Miller from Defra writes about the challenge of designing greener public policies and services.

Designer Becky Miller from Defra writes about the challenges and opportunities of designing greener public policies and services 🌱

#GovDesign #ServiceDesign #SystemsThinking

publicpolicydesign.blog.gov.uk/2024/09/26/h...

Transforming Higher Education With Human-Centred Design Encouraging a collaborative and thoughtful approach to the wicked problems facing higher education (HE), this book is a showcase of pioneering educators who believe that well-designed education is goo...

Pleased to have been able to contribute a tiny foreword to support the great work of other people using user centred design in education in this new book - Transforming Higher Education with User Centred Design by Radka Newton, Jean Mutton and Michael Doherty www.routledge.com/Transforming...