Last week we hosted the second unconference organised by UKEducamp. Some of the team have been part of the organising committee throughout, and most of us took part on the day. We all took something from this fantastic volunteer-led free event and recommend more higher education digital colleagues get involved.
On Friday, I attended my first unconference. It turned out to be one of the most fulfilling days I’ve had in a long time.
In 2023 we collaborated on a project with the Widening Participation team to rework their web content aimed at prospective undergraduate students. Our approach made sure we had a shared focus, we collaborated effectively with subject matter experts, and we appraised our work as we progressed.
We tested a new approach to webpage content layout on University webpages with prospective students, comparing it to the existing style. While we didn’t see significant improvements in effectiveness and efficiency of user performance in the tasks set, all participants strongly preferred the new proposed design when questioned at the end of the usability test. […]
UK EduCamp is a volunteer-run organisation who run unconferences to bring together digital professionals in higher education. We’re hosting the upcoming event on Friday 12 January. It’s free and open to book a place.
In summer 2022, we used a 5-second test to understand what caught a person’s attention and what they could remember after looking at a piece of content for a short time. In this post, I reflect on the lessons my team and I learned conducting this research as part of the fees payment project.
We’ve been using an analytics and feedback tool, Hotjar, on our beta pages of the new undergraduate degree profiles. The insight mirrors what we saw in earlier usability testing, so we’re implementing design changes to address issues.
Over the summer we undertook user research with prospective research students to better understand their experiences and help inform the design of our future web presence. We presented findings last week to the student recruitment and marketing community, and the slides and video are now available to staff.
On 13 December 2023, we hosted an update event on the progress our team has made in designing the new postgraduate taught page template for the new degree finder. This post gives a summary of the event, with access to the event slides and recording.
I gave a presentation recently at the Communications and Marketing department all-staff meeting, in which I shared some of our team working practices. We use regularly scheduled sessions to ensure good communication and support within the team, and to ensure we deliver a steady stream of updates to our stakeholders across the University.
