F R A N K L Y + G R E E N

I can't be the only one that's shocked it's May. I feel like I bent over to tie my shoelaces in February and a whole two months ran past me.

Week 008 though has been the week for removing blockages - the dynorod of weeks.

We've now started to move quite quickly on the playingwithculture work - deciding on a format that will move the project along at pace with lots of different iterations (I've been hanging out with techy dudes too long). We've recently been hamstrung by wanting to have a large launch but very little time to spend on it. Our new approach has kind of freed us up a little.

I've also been doodling and noodling on paper looking at new designs for the Surface tables. We had spent the previous month looking at wireframes and mock ups  with a gut feeling they just don't work. Last week we realised it was because the design and interactions were innately boring. The design focused solely on the objects and the categorisation of content. Or put another way, we had designed something particularly amazing for the researcher visitors and completely forgotten the other 85% of the visitor population. We get to see the new designs in action tomorrow.

My last mental block was the research. we knew we had something rich from all the comments on our questionnaire but frankly had no idea how to harness this. A couple of weeks ago a colleague showed me the wonderful art of  coding. This involves finding themes in the responses and then tagging the comments that apply. None of the data is earth shattering but the process of looking for the themes has really helped the focus of the app we hope to develop as a result.

A temporary lull in the weeknotes means that Weeknotes 004 will be forever known as the lost week. Easter weekend in Suffolk led to reception only available with your hand in the air stood in a conifer hedge. Result: relaxing easy and updating a blog, well, challenging.

As you'll see from the list below, the back-to-back workshops have finished and work time has become a little less heavily scheduled.

The edited highlights of the last two weeks...

• A trip to see Jack Chestermans exhibition at Dean Clough - art and printmaking I'm happy, paintings of boats in boat sheds Johnny's happy.
• London for the 'still top secret' project kick off with the developers
• Deep discussions over refreshments with herbs in - Rosemary and olive oil cake (?!) and Pear and Thyme Collins (Double ?!)
• Coming up with questions for the project evaluator to ask me. My new conversation starter -  'what questions do you think I should ask you?'
• Answering positively to an email asking if I can source floral arrangements for this event made entirely of weeds found in skips/ditches etc
• Putting the newly re-established Leeds Savage Club in touch with Barwick-in-Elmet Historical Society who are researching the Victorian Leeds Savage Club.

The next week looks set to be one of application design and specification for the Microsoft Surface tables and writing the report for the research.

The question I'll leave you with, and what I think we will have  to decide on by the end of this week is -  interpretation provided by the group members - should this provide insight the object that inspired them or the object they created.