Hearing from 40 academic and professional services staff across various Schools and business units revealed why some groups of staff underused profiles compared to others and provided insights into the relative needs and preferences of different groups of staff.

Thousands of staff have a profile on the University website, yet many more don’t. Through interviews with staff, the Role of Profiles project sought to find out why, and to establish needs and requirements for profiles. This blog post documents reasons and use cases staff shared for having a University web profile.

Content in University staff profiles plays a dual role in highlighting the achievements and important work of University employees and showcasing the institution as a centre of excellence. A profiles project sought to learn what staff needed from their online profiles. This post collates insights into profile content requirements, based on what staff shared in […]

Research for the Role of Profiles project found that many University staff profiles were out-of-date. Interviewing staff about their current processes for creating, updating and deleting profiles identified the work required to keep profiles current, and surfaced areas of good practice as well as opportunities for improvement.

Interviewing 40 academic and professional services staff about profiles not only revealed insights from staff about their own profiles, but also viewpoints from staff involved in coordinating and utilising profile content. This blog post recounts the process to synthesis and analyse staff interview data to surface these different perspectives and understand associated needs and requirements.

The Role of Profiles project aims to identify recommendations for an improved online profile provision, based on the needs of University staff. Interviewing individual staff members was our primary research method. This post outlines how we set up and conducted staff interviews – to hear what staff had to say, and to gather data on […]

I was pleased to be invited to deliver guest lectures about the User Experience (UX) Service by academic colleagues. Presenting to students and answering their questions helped me take fresh perspectives on framing the role of UX at the University.

As part of the Role of Profiles project, the UX team learned from the work of Safa Alsalman, who investigated using AI to produce biographical content for academic staff while working for Edinburgh Innovations.

I joined the annual Boye & Co end-of-winter meeting to share and discuss issues and trends in digital leadership and content management with other professionals from digital industries. I shared our work experimenting with AI in Drupal and learned about opportunities and challenges in the digital sector.

As part of the Role of Profiles research project, the UX Service circulated a survey to staff across the University to gather data about how they use online profiles and what they think of them. 262 staff responded, providing valuable insights.