Weeknote 50

First week as a designer, Railway and accessibility grumbles, More cycling

First week as a designer

I had that new job feeling this week, well somewhat. I started my new role as an interaction designer, mostly reading through countless documentation and attending several meetings on the new team with dxw/GDS. It was also the same week we'd our company's summer party, plus a design team away day. I enjoyed both, and it was great to meet lots of colleagues in-person from all over the UK who'd come to the company events. Our away day event included a visit to the Twist museum, which was a joyful experience of all kinds of visual illusion and also a helpful way to experience being colour-blind.

Railway and accessibility grumbles

My main grumbles of the week kicked off with news about planned closures of hundreds of train station ticket offices across the UK. My social media feeds were awash with concerns across the accessibility community about the impact this will have for them, among many other people, in making UK train travel impossible or even harder than it already is. Also on the topic of accessibility grumbles, Meta's hurried public launch of Threads this week had me very frustrated at how the platform in its current state excludes many users with low vision and other disabilities.

More cycling

I spent part of the weekend doing a couple of laps round Richmond Park with a new local cycling buddy I found, unexpectedly, who I'd initially hired as a carpenter. This was a pleasant find, as I've been on the lookout for a cycling buddy for a while now, up to a similar calibre and living not too far away. Following my outing, I tuned in to live coverage of Le Tour de France on Saturday, to the sad sight of Mark Cavendish sitting in an ambulance after cracking his collar bone. Such devastation his last time on Le Tour ended this way!