Cycles: 20250616-20250924

Okay. I have to finally break the seal on this. So here is June to September cycle. Too much to sum up in detail.

If I’d written this entry a few weeks ago, my garden would be described as a parched, scorched and barren landscape. As I write this the grass is glistening with droplets of rain, the pond overflows with a constant trickle of water and the pollinators that were wilted with a lack of water are now weighed down with an abundance.

We’ve had an explosion of tomatoes this year. Two of the three nursery-bought plants have done equally well again. The additional six plants my elderly neighbour donated eventually caught up with their raised bed neighbours. While I did my best to tend to their growth they have taken on a life of their own and I can no longer tell which branch belongs to which plant. It’s a mess of orange and red spheres of different sizes, barely holding themselves up by the accumulative weight.

Enveloped in this mess is the the Japanese squash plant that isn’t doing as well. The few fruits that have started to grow have since given up and dropped from their stalks. This is likely due to my neglect. I had planned to create a natural structure to tease the plant up and across the wall behind. Like so many of my plans they suffer from a lack of time. Perhaps this is something to create over winter while I have the space?

The thriving wildlife pond has had more attention and been given an extension. Not far from my house a tree was felled and cut into sections. Conveniently they were just about movable with a second pair of hands and two wheels. After some odd looks and comments from people we past – “Well that was very David Lynch!” – the logs have a new home supporting a perimeter to plant more pollinators. They’ve provided some much needed shade to an otherwise very sun exposed water. The cat mint and other pollinators have been constantly raided by bees of all types. The curiosity of these new visitors made me think about creating a large bee hotel on the south facing wall above the pond. I think I’m probably too late for this now but something to prepare for next year.

The occasional thud of apples falling from our apple tree has been a constant reminder of an opportunity potentially wasted. After countless windfall apples were left to decay last year, I was determined to make a better use of them in 2025. Last year I made a very successful batch of fire cider – heavily spiced apple cider vinegar – and after a quick search found a method for creating my own apple cider vinegar at home. I now have two large Kilner jars filled with fermenting apples. They’re coming along nicely, the kitchen now smelling very boozy! I think I’m going to need my own kitchen one of these days.

These last few months have been exceptionally busy. I’ve really struggled to summon the energy and time to write about my life. I’ve also been wrestling with why I write and why share it publicly at all.

On one hand there have been serendipitous reminders of the benefits of ‘writing as thinking’ in the books I’m reading and podcasts I’ve listened to. On the other hand, I am conscious and worried about the constant threat of digital privacy and consent of what happens to my public facing data. Over the past few months I have toyed with giving up publishing content and even to such extreme lengths of remove the contents of my website from the web entirely. My current thinking is that writing and publishing on an independent platform is an act of resistance and decent. With everything going on at the moment we need this more than ever.

Part of the problem is I’ve always found it challenging to get started or simply creating the conditions for the writing to get done. Thankfully I received an invitation to Jason Mesut’s Write Club: a dedicated hour for writing, or doing, over a Wednesday lunchtime over a Zoom call with friendly and creative people to a backdrop of some chilled tunes. A tiny break in the seal and the words to come flooding out. I love how it’s rebooted a valuable habit. Thanks Jason!

It’s be all change at Waitrose Online. We’ve had people move in and out of our team and some really exciting workshops. Here’s a few of the things to write home about.

• During the cover of a Design Sprint, Tom I conducted some qualitative research with some incremental micro-design improvements over a few days. It bought me back to my agency days with Flow states a plenty.
• We unfortunately had to say goodbye to Rob and Ben from the super-secret-2025-shopping-team. I’m really sad to see them move on but also very excited for what they’re moving on to. A massive thank you to both of them for being very welcoming and for all of the great work they’ve done.
• Every cloud has a silver lining and Jac has stepped and has made a big impact already with some very fancy Figma Makes. I’m itching to get data-driven web-native prototypes in front of customers.
• Introduced to me by Tom, we’ve been applying the foundations of the SenseMaker method in our recent research studies. Certain aspects have clicked with other methods I’ve used in the past such as Kano model and ERT.
• We’ve had some positive results from what we’ve shipped so far and starting to get some feedback from customers. This is a really exciting phase for the team and I’m looking forward to what’s coming next.
• The Waitrose and John Lewis research teams had a joint away-day at JL HQ. It was a mix of team building, obligatory inductions, workshops and a tour of the test lab that was frankly really simple but impressive that it needs it’s own write up!
• We had the pleasure of Jason Mesut run a remote Shaping Workshop. It conveniently fell on the same week as my review so I was primed for reflection and thinking about my future self. Big thanks to Jason for running it with warmth and humility.
• We’ve also been reviewing the design and research competency framework as a wider team. There’s been some excellent thinking behind it so far and we’ve come together to review and develop it further. I really appreciate this collaborative approach we’ve taken. Exciting times!

My Strava stats recently and it confirm my fears of just how little I’ve ridden this year. Yet there are two events that stuck out for me.

After missing the event multiple years due to ill-timed illness I finally got to attended the Brothers in the Wild weekend in Dorset. The Isle of Purbeck is absolutely stunning with a mix of terrain that tricks you into thinking you could be elsewhere in the world. With glorious weather and great company I’m glad to finally tick it off my list.

Dom (drum and bass on a bike) came to Brighton a few weeks ago. I bumped into some previous work colleagues buy quick lost them amongst the hundreds of people the came along for the fun. I really needed an antidote to the depressing headlines being repeated daily and this was a great reminder that we have strength in numbers.