Testing what we develop with prospective students is fundamental to delivering a new website that is easy to use and meets their needs.  I’ve been responsible for making sure the team gets regular sight of students interacting with our work-in-progress through the course of the development leading up to our beta release.

On 30 April 2024, we hosted an event to showcase the insights we gained from releasing a beta of the new undergraduate programme pages. This post gives a summary of the event, with access to the event slides and recording.

School editors of undergraduate degree profiles will be encountering our new content model soon, as we prepare for entry 2026 content development. We have new training and guidance, and a longer lead in to give everyone enough time to prepare.

On 25 March 2024, we hosted an update event on the progress our team has made in designing the new postgraduate research page template for the new degree finder. This post gives a summary of the event, with access to the event slides and recording.

We recently hosted an update event on the team’s research and design work over the summer and autumn of 2023 on the new programme page template for taught postgraduate programmes. This post summarises the event, with access to the event slides and recording for University of Edinburgh staff. Slides and recording Presentation slides (PowerPoint file […]

We’re running an online event on Monday 25 March to share our latest work on developing the new postgraduate research programme page. Come along to see our work-in-progress prototype and give feedback on our work.

We’re running an open invite event on Microsoft Teams on Tuesday 12 March to share our latest insight from user research as part of the project developing the new postgraduate taught (on-campus and online) programme page.

I joined the Prospective Student Web Content Team in September 2023, and immediately headed out on campus with everyone to conduct usability testing with new students. It was a great way to immerse myself in the Team’s user-centred approach and learn about a technique that should be part of every content designer’s skill set.

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. […]

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.