Our latest showcase event for the User Experience Service focused on case studies of recent projects. Lightning talks were followed by a chance to chat with members of project and service teams who had commissioned the work.

Over thirty colleagues braved the snowy conditions to join us yesterday at our third showcase event to promote the UX Service.

We kicked off as usual with lightning talks to set the scene:

• UX Service update and introductions – Neil Allison
• Card Services research – Neil Allison (for Magda Tsiobanelis)
• Helpline student self service enhancements – Lauren Tormey and Neil Bruce
• BI–MI tools research case study – Nick Daniels
• API service research case study – Duncan Stephen
• Online learning applicant experience; supporting agency recruitment & liaison  – Neil Allison
• Web strategy update – Colan Mehaffey

Lightning talk slides

All the case studies are covered in more detail on the newly-launched UX Service website, along with details of the services available, training opportunities, further reading and resources.

UX Service website case studies

It was great to see such a large, engaged and interested turnout despite the weather. We had a few last minute drop outs as colleagues chose to leave early or work remotely due to snow, but interest in these sessions continues to be strong. Almost 50 had registered an interest over the past couple of weeks.

After the talks, informal Q&A

Pretty much everyone stayed around after the talks to explore the case studies further. We had set up the room to display materials from six projects, and had project and service representatives on hand alongside our staff to answer any questions.

Special thanks to the colleagues who gave up their time to support us, answer questions and generally be supportive and positive about the work we’ve done together:

• Barry Croucher, Head of Help Services
• Neil Bruce, Head of Operational Services
• Alex Carter, Head of Service Management
• Stewart Laing, Online Learning Marketing Project Manager
• Colan Mehaffey, Head of Web Strategy and Technologies

Lauren Tormey presents her lightning talk on the ongoing collaboration between the IS Helpline, the UX Service and Website & Communications.

Neil Allison gets feedback from showcase attendees who had travelled from Scottish Enterprise in Glasgow to attend.

Stewart Laing talks about findings from research with prospective online masters students.

Neil Bruce talks about our ongoing collaboration to improve IT self service web pages and reduce support requests.

Barry Croucher engages an attendee around our research with students about use of photos and social media.

Alex Carter sponsored user research to support his BI/MI service development project. The work was undertaken by Nick Daniels.

Thanks to Tim Gray and Callum Kerr for capturing such great footage of the Showcase.

Feedback

There was a really positive and interested atmosphere in the room, with the vast majority of attendees choosing to stay and learn more for up to an hour after the presentations ended.

We asked everyone to assign sticky dots against the most relevant words (and to add their own words if they preferred) as a quick way to gather feedback as they left.

We asked attendees to dot vote their feelings about the UX Showcase event.

Did you attend? What did you think?

Please leave a comment below this article and let us know what you got out of the session.