The University of Edinburgh is a huge institution with a big beast of a website, so as the newest recruit to the University Website Programme team – Editorial Development Officer – I’m still finding my feet in week three.

Prototyping is a technique for cheaply creating relatable representations (or ‘mockups’) of your ideas to reduce misinterpretation, encourage development, and enable effective user testing.

This months’ Web Publishing Community saw a comprehensive update on the Drupal project, a live demo of the Balsamiq prototyping tool, and a presentation from Arthur Wilson on different ways to embed PURE data in Drupal.

Prototyping training is something I’ve been keen on getting off the ground for a long while now. With the help of ux consultant Marianne O’Loughlin, we ran a pilot of a new training course this week.

We piloted a new training session this week on personas. UX consultant Marianne O’Loughlin delivered the session for us, having worked with me over the past couple of months to pull the session together.

We got together last week for a couple of hours to look at what and how we communicate. The session was collaborative and fun – led by one of our Editorial Development Officers, Ailsa Wilson.

Keeping personas alive and putting them to good use was the focus for a presentation at the Web Publishers’ Community.

I’ve been working over the past couple of months with Marianne O’Loughlin, a user experience (UX) consultant, to develop new training courses for the University.