Google has introduced a new ‘home’ within Google Analytics to try to introduce insights from machine learning into the platform. This replaces the former starting report – Audience, Overview – and in this post, I’d like to offer my thoughts on what this change means for University of Edinburgh users.

This week we ran our first event to showcase the work of the pilot User Experience Service and associated areas like EdGEL and strategy development. At this session I wanted to try a different approach, encouraging dialogue about our work-in-progress, rather than one-way dissemination.

Having recently joined the University in the role of Head of Web Strategy & Technologies, I’ve had an intense few weeks getting to grips with the University’s online presence. In this post I’ll cover a little of my thinking around strategy, and upcoming areas of work.

Nick Daniels joined us this week on secondment from the School of Philosophy, Psychology & Language Sciences for 9 months. He’s going to help us increase the level of service we offer while we commit to longer term collaborations with business units focussing on incremental improvements to their web presences.

Workshops – like so many techniques of improving user experience – don’t need to be long or complicated. If fact, they should save you time.

A set of activities to support the development of a long-term University-wide web strategy has kicked off recently, by recruiting the new role of Head of Web Strategy and Technologies.

This week I gave an update on the pilot User Experience Services to the board overseeing all areas involved in the Digital Transformation portfolio. In this post, I’m sharing the slides, plus a transcript of what I talked through.

Our tech team recently did some great work for IS Helpline, creating a bespoke webform that directs users to self-serve before submitting an enquiry. The form itself, though, isn’t what will ultimately help reduce support calls—it’s an iterative process of user testing, editorial improvements and analysis.

Starting life as an Asset and Style Library for EdWeb the Edinburgh Global Experience Language (EdGEL) is evolving into a Code Agnostic Framework with built in processes and global standards compliance.

A programme of projects centered around user experience (UX) are now up and running, providing new processes, services and training to key University-wide initiatives.