With the move to the new Web Publishing Platform and the advent of the new University Design System, we’re taking the opportunity to gather some feedback on our flagship Effective Digital Content course, to ensure we offer the best possible training for staff working with digital content. 

Multibranding – representing the University brand alongside partner brands to accurately reflect partnerships without compromising our own integrity  – is a design challenge shared across the University. The aesthetics aspect of multibranding is particularly important to get right. As part of the Design System project, we are planning a two-part community event aimed at developing […]

Representing brands of University partners to accurately reflect collaborations whilst ensuring integrity of the University brand is a complex, widespread issue. As part of the Design System project, I ran a session where University staff came together to work on the governance aspect of multibranding by collectively structuring a checklist. 

When talking about technology, achieving understanding without confusion can be difficult, but communicating about technical concepts and processes is crucial for the success of our services. To achieve our aim of a more unified and coherent approach to technical communication across the University, the UX service has begun a new project to map the use […]

As part of the new Web Publishing Platform project, we needed a way to test ideas for new navigational approaches, to get feedback to inform iterative design. We used testing platform Maze to run remote, unmoderated tests on navigational prototypes built using design tool Figma, to gain quick insights from large numbers of users.

We used Figma to create a mocked-up megamenu for a School site and used Maze to test how people used it to complete a set of tasks. We repeated the test for the same site using a left-hand menu and compared the results.

We wanted to test a mobile navigation concept so we built a prototype mobile menu structure using Figma and tested it with 100 people using the Maze testing platform.

When it comes to making digital products and services accessible, alt text – short for alternative text , or images as words – is a fundamental requirement. It can be tricky to get alt text right and this was a priority for the new Web Publishing Platform.

Our development team built an initial version of the editorial interface of the new Web Publishing Platform. I took the opportunity to gather some feedback from web publishers across the University and to revisit the results of our initial top tasks survey about priorities for the new platform.

Staff from universities across the UK have formed a new UX (user experience) group as part of UCISA – a member-led professional body for digital practitioners in education. Initially established in June 2021, the group became part of UCISA in September 2021.