Barry Khan – Service Designer Birmingham

What to humanise and a quieter phone

Date // Category weeknotes

Weeknotes from 30 October 2026

Work

A year in

It's been a while since the last weeknote. I'm back, partly to mark a year in my current engagement (six months was back in April), working as a Service Designer on a central government project.

I've worked in UCD for over 20 years, across print, web, app and game UI, interaction and service design in government. One pattern I keep noticing is that I'm happiest when I'm learning, and I get itchy feet when I'm not. It's been a while since I've learned as much as I have in the past year. Partly, yes, AI. But less about the tools than I expected.

What to automate, what to humanise

The tools have been part of it. I've worked on multiple AI-enabled services and leaned on pretty much all five of the ways the government's AI Playbook says AI can help. In practice that's looked like NotebookLM to make sense of large piles of insight, mapping user journeys straight from policy, building blueprints, prototype screens and journey maps, and predicting the alignment of game design patterns.

But the bigger learning has been working out what to automate and streamline with AI, and what to humanise. Where people actually add value.

For me that's conversation, building relationships, and creating the space for those conversations to happen in the first place. AI has done a lot of the rest very well. Let's keep letting it. The human connections, that's the Service Designer's bit. Doing what AI can't.

A skill for weeknotes

Part of getting back into weeknotes was making them easier to write. Built a Claude skill to help, and added it to a new GitHub repo for my Claude skills. It's private for now.

It's deliberately simple. Through the week I say "Hey Siri, work note", speak a line, and it lands in a plain text file on iCloud. On Friday, Claude turns the notes into a draft. No app to open, which suits the quieter phone.

This is the first post written with it, so if it reads a bit off, blame the tooling.

Away from Work

3D printing and a new office

Been exploring 3D printing and fell down the rabbit hole, as you do. Ended up ordering a Bambu Lab P2S with the AMS Pro and four reels of filament, picked up in a Black Friday deal. Currently working through its first test print.

It's also got me picking up some spatial UX and physical design, prototyping with the real world rather than just screens.

Which is partly why I'm planning a new office. The shed is fine for me, less fine for a 3D printer. Temperature varies too much.

Steve Backshall and a frictionless food stand

Tied to the above, went to the Steve Backshall show at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham. The food vendor had you swipe in, the barriers open, you pick your food and walk out. Simple and frictionless.

I wouldn't want it every day, but at an event, already expecting to get ripped off, I was far more accommodating. Context really does decide whether a spatial pattern works.

A quieter phone

Digital detox is going well. Back in April I stripped an old Pixel 5 right back to stay off the phone more. It worked. After a bit I stopped reaching for it, and screen time dropped from 5 or 6 hours a day to around 2.

Went back to iPhone eventually, because of friction with family calendars, shopping list and Find My. But I didn't want the full attention sink back, so I stripped that down too, with help from apps like Dumb Phone that tone down the badges, balloons, animations and all the little nudges that keep you reaching for it.

Then I took Mail, YouTube, Safari and Gemini off (I'd been using Gemini as a browser), and honestly at that point I was barely using the phone. Screen time is now around an hour, mostly things I actually value, podcasts, Plexamp, maps. Still use Siri the odd time.

Feels so much better. Glad I did it.

Plexamp over Spotify

Also moved off Spotify. The family still have an account so it's not really a cost saving, but I don't miss it.

I'd noticed I was listening to the same handful of albums on loop and never getting through them end to end. Set up Plexamp against my NAS, pointed it at the CDs I'd ripped years ago, and now I can stream the whole collection from anywhere, Sonos included. Albums are back to being albums.

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.