This year, we spoke to 97 people about how they searched for degrees and whether they had used AI tools in the process. I used these insights, along with data from GA4 and results from stress-testing various AI tools, to create a presentation for the 2025 ContentEd conference.

In June 2018, the University of Edinburgh ran a top tasks survey to identify what information prospective students are prioritising when thinking about applying to university. In this post, I’ll talk about the method, why we ran the original survey, the insight we gained from it, and why it’s time to do it again.

We recently reviewed the new undergraduate study website with 19 students, using a summative usability testing approach to produce a performance scorecard. While the new site scored really well, we identified a few areas to improve further.

Our team went on campus during the recent Undergraduate Open Day to do some pop-up research and check some design concepts with prospective students and their parents.

On February 4th, we hosted an open invitation online session to share our insights on flexible study, short courses and the ICL route to a postgraduate qualification. This was of particular relevance to colleagues in related fields, such as Short Courses, Executive Education, Continuing Professional Development, and the part-time intermittent route to a postgraduate award. […]

We’re running an open invite event on Microsoft Teams to share what we learned through staff engagement and user research about the University’s flexible study options. This includes the part-time intermittent (sometimes called ‘Invoiced at Course Level’) route to a postgraduate award and its overlap with other flexible study options. Join us to learn more […]

This blog is part of a series on a mini-project the Content Operations team completed in August and September 2024. In this instalment, I review my approach to usability testing for new postgraduate funding content, highlighting what I would do differently if I could do it over again with a little less time pressure.

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.

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.