OLD: UX Community of Practice

Owned by Caylee Farndon-Taylor (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Mar 02, 2022 by Amy Everett (Deactivated)
2 min read

Every other Friday we come together as a UX community of practice to learn, collaborate or share. Sometimes we have guests present from other organisations and teams, however our default is that this is a safe space for developing our UX practice as a group. The COP extends across England and Scotland. We also have a devoted slack group, and we block out Friday morning ‘collaboration sessions’ which we can use if we need them (and get the time back if not).

Definition

So what is a COP anyway? We define this as “a network of practitioners of the same discipline who meet regularly to share, develop and define their practice”. COPs at Shelter have an organisational responsibility to create and co-own ​the principles, guidelines and standards for all our ​digital products. You can read more about communities of practice in ‘Building successful communities of practice’ by Emily Webber (which we have a copy of in our Digital Old Street library).

Facilitation

We rotate the role of facilitator for each COP. You can see what we’ve focussed on in previous sessions, and who’s facilitating next in this spreadsheet: https://shelteruk.sharepoint.com/:x:/s/UX/ESBKN9q6kXJCnBMvfF7jagkB08MRKc4oAx46CuMQD7Kuag?e=m5y3jr

Documentation

We store previous presentations and other docs in sharepoint: https://shelteruk.sharepoint.com/:f:/r/sites/UX/UX/UX Community of Practice?csf=1&web=1&e=ftMlNx

Evolution

After the first year Eleanor and Caylee created a presentation on the editorial and UX COPs, and what we’d learnt so far: https://shelteruk.sharepoint.com/:p:/s/UX/EfWlZta-NhBNhzOAJum4NRcBhzWjBwAizVAfWmzET3omQw?e=P5CzRc Feel free to share this if anyone is asking about what a COP is, or the way we run this in UX.

Since creating that presentation we’ve found that the following is working well:

  • Team is much more collaborative; communicating, sharing and involving each other without prompting = across England UXDs / England Service Design + Research / Scotland 

  • COP slack group is helping to facilitate this 

  • Shared facilitation of COPs is working well; takes pressure off lead and offers more opportunity for sharing / presenting to the whole team 

Things we’ve changed since the first year:

  • Moved from weekly to bi-weekly 

  • Started with longer sessions – 1hr presentation + 30m updates. We’re now working more closely so updates aren’t required anymore 

  • Have also blocked out 1hr ‘collaboration time’ every week – for independent COP work (like guidelines) or for swarming together e.g. for a design crit. These don’t have to be used if not needed. Likewise not everyone has to be involved. We felt we needed this because the other session lends itself more to presentations – not work. *members should ensure the session is recorded

  • Note: most of us also now save up our learning time and take it all in one go as a monthly (blocked off) studio day in a similar format. 

  • We invite externals in to present when relevant 

  • We invite internal colleagues to join when relevant