Our prospective postgraduate taught student journey map is shaped by three high-level phases we identified in the user research we did in the process of designing and delivering the new University degree finders. It’s an at-a-glance summary for student recruitment and marketing colleagues.

The process of user research with prospective PhD students challenged our early assumptions of the applicant journey. We evolved our initial thinking, leading to two new and distinct user journey maps.

The user journey for students applying for a self-directed PhD is distinct from those looking for a project-based PhD, so we’ve mapped each separately with an accompanying commentary on what we learned from our user research.

We’ve recently finished development on our postgraduate programme content types for the new degree finder. We are now sharing a preview of the different sections, guidance and formatting for them.

I recently facilitated a series of workshops to redesign content that explains the postgraduate research (PGR) applying process. This process is complex, but these workshops gave us space to work through the content in detail and, crucially, draw on the subject matter expertise of our user researcher.

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 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.

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.

Provision for prospective postgraduate research (PGR) students is largely devolved to schools, which makes it challenging to work out what is useful to publish in the centrally-managed Study section of the website. We’re undertaking discovery phase user research to better understand what students are doing and what might enhance their experience.