Another busy week in the Digital Team… here’s what we’ve been up to! 

picture of springtime flowers

Congratulations Sam! 

Our wonderful colleague Sam has been appointed to the role of Lead Specialist Advisor, User-centred Design, an exciting role where she will be able to help shape how we plan, prioritise, and strengthen how we work as a team. 

SCALE AI Summit 

On Monday, James and Sophie attended the SCALE AI Summit to learn more about the potential of AI for Social Care. 

Led by the Centre for Social Care and Artificial Intelligence Learning (SCALE), the event looked at ways to harness the potential of AI in the Social Care sector, aiming to kickstart activity and build critical mass in a new, exciting, and fast-moving cross-disciplinary research area. 

SCALE brings together Cardiff University researchers from the School of Computer Science & Informatics, the Children’s Social Care Research and Development Centre (CASCADE) and the Centre for Adult Social Care (CARE) to ensure a variety of expertise and differing perspectives are shared. 

It was great to speak with skilled social care workers and glean insight from their lived experiences to consider how AI can support in their work, as well as the limitations of working alongside AI when it comes to the sensitive data within the care sector.  

Some of the negatives that were shared included:  

  • The potential for data leaks, hacking and more 
  • The reliance on AI technology leading to lost skills in the sector 
  • The environmental impact of AI  
  • The possibility of perpetuating harmful stereotypes or biases that already exist in the research (that an AI model would be learning from)  
  • A fear among social workers that their role would be under surveillance or monitoring 

On the other hand, some of the positives that could be attained through this model included: 

  • The potential to free up admin time and allow support workers to do the ‘human’ aspect of the role 
  • The opportunity to improve work life balance for social workers in the space 
  • The possibility of a neutrality offered by computers that individuals might not be able to offer 
  • Fewer silos of information, and more sharing of best practice and knowledge between relevant organisations   

We look forward to following this research in its development. Also in attendance was this incredible, semi-autonomous robot developed by Cardiff University’s researchers as a tool to support children with autism in building their social synchronicity skills. The robot can speak, dance and interact with children without changing facial expressions, helping to reduce overwhelming stimulus. We loved learning more about how technology can help support young people with autism. 

Cardiff University’s white and black robot sitting on the table

New accessibility training for all 

The UK Department of Education recently published some online training for people who are interested in learning more about accessibility.   

The content features a basic foundation, which is training designed for everyone to understand the basics of accessibility and inclusive design. 

There’s an additional level of intermediate training that progresses from basic to more complex areas of accessibility awareness and understanding. 

If you’re interested in developing your accessibility awareness, please see the accessibility resources on the Gov.UK website.

Picture of a woman unravelling thoughts from her brain

Mental Health Awareness Week 2025 

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week which is an annual event organised by the Mental Health Foundation, dedicated to increasing awareness about mental health and well-being.  

This year, it takes place from 12 to 18 May 2025 and the theme is ‘community’. Being part of a safe, positive community is vital for our mental health and wellbeing. We thrive when we have strong connections with other people and supportive communities that remind us, we are not alone. Communities can provide a sense of belonging, safety, support in hard times, and give us a sense purpose.  

We spend so much time in work, it’s important to check in on our colleagues and support our community here at work as well as at home.  

Our modern world is structured around staying connected via digital devices. Online communities are also a great way to interact with people, but social media can be an unconscious source of anxiety and stress so if you feel drained, consider logging off and treating yourself to a digital detox this week.  

Engaging in a digital detox can positively benefit your mental health, with benefits including better quality of sleep, reduced stress and anxiety, improved relationships, and better productivity. 

We hope this week prompts you to focus on improving your mental well-being, and to help reduce stigma through open conversations about mental health.  

If you or someone you know is struggling with their mental health, please take a look at the support available.    

Bird licensing 

Sam, Laura and Phil continue to work on improving the bird licensing content pages and form.  

We’ve had a really good week with this piece of work. We continue to focus our efforts on fish-eating birds. 

Firstly, we were invited to show our work to the fish-eating birds project board meeting. 

The show and tell went very well. Sam did an amazing job at showing the group the new form flow.

Screenshot of the bird licensing show and tell

Sam also showed the group why we use standard patterns when creating content and forms. 

We explained to the group that we follow particular standards in all the work that we do, these are:  

  • our content and publishing manual 
  • digital service standards for Wales 
  • GDS Design System 

We also continue to work very closely with the subject matter experts on improving the content and form. 

Our next job is to continue to work with the team to finish the fish-eating birds part of the form. 

We also plan to: 

  • test the form and content pages with users 
  • go live with an interim version of our bird licensing content pages 
  • iterate as needed  

Other things we’ve been working on… 

  • Kim, Lucinda and Laura have been looking behind the scenes at hornbill. This is an internal tool that is used for content requests and ICT reporting. They are investigating the possibility of streamlining the service for users. Discovery work is well underway – looking at the feedback, the most used forms and mapping the user journey. 
  • James and Heledd met with the SoNaRR team to plan publishing the State of Natural Resources Report (SoNaRR) 2025. We publish this report every five years and it assesses the state of Wales’s natural resources. James did user research to better understand how we could improve on the 2020 report. We’ll include some of these insights in the 2025 report, for example having key messages for each chapter at the top of the page.
  • Laura has been reviewing the ‘check if you can use land we manage’ service and the ‘Apply to use land we manage’ service. There are some great insights coming through from the smart survey data and the user feedback form. Overall it’s looking really positive. Laura can talk about this for hours, so instead of fitting it into weeknotes she’s going to write a blog with some of the key findings and tasks to take forward.