Barry Khan

Back to prototyping and a tidier desk

Date // Category weeknotes

Weeknotes from 6 November 2026

Work

Talking prototyping

Was invited to give a talk this week, interviewed as part of a lecture on prototyping for the User Experience and Service Design Masters at the University of Münster.

It reminded me just how much I love prototyping. Taking ideas into a testing environment and seeing how they align with users' expectations.

Not a new thought, I had a bit of a rant about it a while back. But explaining it to a group of Masters students made it land again.

Big props to the wonderful Dr Heather Madden, lecturer on the course, for having me. I've known Heather for some time now, ever since she first spoke to me about an MoJ contract many moons ago. Funny how these things come back round.

Design documentation

Been focusing on design documentation in Confluence this week, using a Claude skill to help with it.

The skill takes the raw artefacts, page links, Mural boards and notes, and turns them into a structured set of Confluence-ready pages, screenshots included. Same idea as the interactive blueprints back in May. Let the tooling carry the upkeep, so more of my time goes on the design itself.

Stripping back the blueprints

Been working on new blueprints, stripping back the detail to make them consumable for stakeholders.

A lesson I seem to keep relearning. This time last year I made the classic mistake of trying to map everything in one go, a sprawling end-to-end visual with too much detail to be useful. Less on the page, more chance someone actually reads it.

Claude in a dev container

Been exploring some new ways of making Claude more secure. The main one is running it inside a dev container, so it only sees the project it's working on, plus anything I deliberately mount in.

The weeknotes inbox is a good example. It lives on iCloud, fed by "Hey Siri, work note", and gets mounted into the container as a single folder. Claude can read the notes, but not the rest of the Mac.

Took a container rebuild and one very long file path to get there.

Away from Work

Printing for the desk (and the kitchen)

The 3D printer from last week has been busy. Mostly under-desk organisation, a monitor riser with shelves underneath, and a keyboard shelf.

Black and white photo of a desk with a felt mat, keyboard and microphone, and a wooden monitor riser with 3D printed storage compartments underneath

Close-up of the monitor riser, showing three 3D printed box compartments supporting a dark wooden shelf

A keyboard tucked away on a 3D printed shelf that slides out from under the front edge of the desk

Away from the desk, a scales shelf for the kitchen, a weird Apple Watch phone adapter, and more coffee paraphernalia.

Not quite the spatial UX work I had in mind when I bought it, but the desk is a lot tidier.

I'll add links to the designs at some point, so you can print your own. Once I've tidied up the files, which may take longer than tidying the desk did.

Till next time!

A bit about me: I'm a UCD specialist focused on Service Design, with a passion for accessibility and creating services for all. I navigate the world with a dry sense of humor, finding the funny side in the most mundane tasks.