Growing our UX maturity by leading a UX Community Day for UK higher education institutions

Building on the success of our in-person UX conference last year, I worked with UCISA to organise and run a hybrid UX Community Day. It succeeded in bringing together 185 professionals from 60 institutes for a day of peer-to peer UX knowledge exchange. I reflect on organising an impactful and enriching event.

Having ran the UX Service for the University for three years, and co-chaired the UCISA UX Group over the same period, I have seen a growing appetite for UX practices and approaches. Within the University, colleagues from different teams have engaged with the UX Service to help them make their digital products, systems and services more user-centred. In the wider Higher Education sector, associates from other institutions have reached out to me and my team to learn more about how we work, with a view to adopting our techniques to improve digital experiences for their audiences and users.

Reflecting on what I learned from running a UCISA UX conference in September 2024, and based on the positive feedback received, I felt assured there was the demand for a similar event in 2025. Since last September, however, there had been rising financial pressures in the sector, indicating that if we were to run another in-person conference, there was a strong possibility that ticket sales may not cover the associated costs.

Read my reflections on the 2024 event in my related blog post:

Eighty UX HE professionals sharing, collaborating and ideating: The magic of UCISA UX24

Running the event with UCISA enabled us to reach colleagues within and outside the University

To ensure the University adopts a user-centred ethos and implements user-centred practices and approaches aligned with the goals of the Digital Strategy, the UX Service works with teams across the University to improve a vast range of user experiences. Furthermore, our newly revamped online training course: Effective Digital Content and our regular focused training Content Improvement Monthly events enable us to reach hundreds of University staff each year who want to learn about UX and put our methods into practice.

Read more about our UX course and regular training events in a blog post by Katie Spearman

Six months of the new Effective Digital Content online course – reflections and next steps

To grow our UX maturity even further, we recognised the benefit of bringing together professionals from other universities for knowledge-transfer and collaboration over shared goals and challenges and partnered with UCISA to run an event which would not only benefit University staff, but also the wider Higher Education sector. Given all UK universities are UCISA members and therefore could attend a UCISA event without additional cost, it made sense to combine UCISA’s event-planning and communications expertise and infrastructure together with our UX knowledge to organise and market an event available to all those interested in UX.

To maximise impact of the UX event, we went online with the option of in-person hubs

Responding to the growing appetite to learn about UX, and in the interests of keeping the event inclusive and accessible to everyone regardless of financial circumstances, we made the decision to opt for an online event for 2025. That said, we were still keen to find a way for attendees to meet in person, to achieve some of the same energy we had experienced at our 2024 UX conference. We came up with a compromise: to make the event online but with the option to attend in-person at ‘hubs’ hosted by participating institutions. To achieve this, we made a call-out to UCISA members to offer a space to host attendees – which was circulated at the same time as the call-for-proposals.

We were successful in setting up four local hubs at:

The University of Edinburgh
The University of Oxford
The University of Nottingham
Birkbeck, University of London

Read more about the UX Community Day schedule and set-up in my blog post promoting the event:

Book now to take part in our UX Community Day in September

To offer practical learning as well as inspiration, the day included a mix of sessions

A point of feedback from the 2024 event related to curating the sessions on offer to achieve a balance between the number and the variety of sessions. The 2024 event had included a total of 11 sessions (eight plenary talks with the option of two workshops and two breakout sessions), which some attendees had felt was too much. Listening to feedback from other UCISA online conferences, we decided that 30 minutes was the right length of time for an online talk (shorter and the presenter may struggle to cover a topic fully, and longer runs the risk of the audience losing concentration). The call-for-speakers received an excellent response, with proposals about practical applications of UX in individual institutions as well as offers of thought-provoking talks by professional speakers. Feedback from the previous conference had indicated that both were welcome, but with a need to space out the practical talks which often required more concentration. Taking this on board, when it came to structuring the schedule for the online event, I decided to experiment with putting the professional speakers later in the programme (instead of a more traditional ‘keynote-first’ approach), to as a way to counter possible fatigue of back-to-back practical talks. We included a morning and afternoon break (with the option to join break-out rooms for discussions) and an hour for lunch.

The event’s popularity demonstrated increased UX maturity and demand for UX

With UCISA’s help, we promoted the UX Community Day for several weeks before it ran on Thursday 11 September. By the date, 185 people from more than 60 institutions had signed up to join, which was more than double the attendance at the 2024 event. This was a clear signal of the growing appetite for UX in higher education, and an indicator of the UX Group’s success in growing influence in the sector. A review of attendees showed people in UX Design and Content Design roles but also colleagues from Business Analysis, Product and Web Development and Change Management roles, demonstrating the interest in UX from other disciplines. After the event, all attendees were sent a feedback form to complete which provided useful insight into the aspects people liked the most, and areas that could be changed to enable those attending to get even more value from the event.

In-person attendees liked the local hub set-up and had suggestions to take it further

Feedback from those joining the event at local hubs was really positive, with attendees appreciating the option to be in a room with others to chat, and to reflect on what they were learning from the session in the programme.

…the hub-based format was a revelation. There’s no way I’d have sat at my own desk for a day and not got distracted by something/someone, so being able to focus on the event in the company of like-minded others was brilliant” – comment from an attendee

Different locations had organised the hubs differently, and attendees shared several ideas to improve the experience provided by the local hubs. I collated these into a set of draft guidelines to consider for the set up of local hubs for future events.

Points to consider when running local hubs

Ensure the hub venue has appropriate audio-visual settings – for example at least one screen that all hub attendees can view and a microphone that can pick up sound from all attendees to feed into the online call
Advise hub attendees to bring their own laptops to be able to independently participate in the chat and other activities associated with the online call without having to rely on doing so on the shared hub screen
Display a running order for the day in the hub so attendees can decide which sessions they would like to attend (if they are unable to attend them all)
Encourage networking between hub attendees with introductions before sessions begin and during the breaks.

Online attendees engaged with ongoing reactions, questions and comments

Throughout the event, I emceed and monitored the online chat, picking out questions for the speakers and keeping track of other activity. It was great to see the chat constantly flowing, with attendees posting comments, reactions and sharing their own insights, recommendations and resources.

Positive feedback indicated the session balance was about right

Ratings and comments from the feedback forms suggested attendees were on the whole happy with the mix of talks included in the schedule for the day, noting that they appreciated the practical aspects and lessons-learned from the real-world case-study-style sessions as well as the ‘lightbulb’ moments sparked by our professional speakers. Some said they would have appreciated having the session slides in advance (to follow along with the speakers) and also valued having speakers’ contact details to be able to follow-up afterwards.

I thought the programme of speakers hit an excellent balance of case studies (for applicable learning) and best-practice/motivational presentations (to raise energy and ideas)” – comment from a delegate

Requests for more time for discussion indicated attendees were fully engaged

Several attendees fed back that they would have liked more time for discussion between the individual sessions, to reflect on what speakers had shared and to think about applying concepts to their own circumstances. Others suggested the speakers’ sessions could have included an interactive element to enable them to take part in practical exercises or try out techniques.

Based on this year’s success, another UX community event is planned for 2026

With all things considered we’re looking ahead to run a similar UX Community Day next year. To keep it inclusive and accessible, we’ll look to repeat the online format with the option of local hubs, taking on board the points of feedback and suggestions for improvement.

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