We are running extra sessions of our showcase of the Usability Testing Service so even more colleagues to learn about the value of direct user engagement by taking part in a real session. Upcoming dates look at the current student experience of IT help self service (14 June) and the prospective student experience using the […]

Vanessa Zervogianni has joined us as a Usability Testing Service Assistant, enabling the pilot service to support more schools and business units to make their websites and software more user friendly.

Yesterday I ran a series of usability testing sessions that were observed by nearly 30 colleagues, most of whom are customers of our service. Some teams would want to do this in private, but not us! We’re happy to have our customers help us identify where we can improve. Plus, we’ve more usability sessions in […]

A couple of weeks ago we distributed a short survey to all EdWeb CMS users, and also invited participation from their colleagues who, while not using the system directly, are stakeholders in the management of University websites. In this post, I share the data collected, and provide a little commentary.

Once again we’re contributing to the annual UK Higher Education web managers conference, IWMW. It’s a great opportunity to learn from and network with colleagues in our sector, and we’re encouraging staff here in Edinburgh to join us at Liverpool John Moores University, 21-23 June.

I’m running 4 demo sessions of the new usability testing service in the coming months. These are open to all staff to come along and see how the process works, with the first happening on Wednesday 25 May.

I was watching a presentation by Lean UX author, Jeff Gothelf, and a point he made about user-focused development – taking small steps, sensing and responding – really struck with me. So much so, I’ve written a bit of it up to share here.

Earlier this week I was supporting our CIO, Gavin McLachlan, as he ran a session on digital transformation for managers within Information Services. The presentation and mini-workshop went down very well, prompting lots of discussion and enthusiastic collaboration. Listening to Gavin’s message prompted me to pull together some thoughts and resources on the subject.

In most walks of life, a small number of things are significantly more important than the rest. To be effective as the manager of a web presence or service, you need to know what matters most to your target audiences. Fortunately this is fairly easy to do.

We do a lot of engagement via University mailing lists, and on the whole do pretty well in terms of response and reaction. I wanted to share with you a few things I’ve learned over the years in the course of communicating with the communities we support.