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.

Homepage Usability: 50 Websites Deconstructed (2002) by Jakob Nielson & Marie Tahir takes a look at the websites of a variety of companies and analyses what’s good about their homepages and what can be improved. These case studies serve as a good reminder as to what you must do to have an effective homepage.

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.

I’m introducing a new usability testing service for the University, for an initial trial period up to the end of July 2016. It will be an easy and convenient way to embed user insight into your development projects, and provide learning opportunities for anyone interested in trying the techniques out for themselves.

This year’s UCISA conference is being held in Manchester from 16 to 18 March. I’m contributing a ‘university showcase’ in which I’ll talk through how we use collaborative usability testing as part of our development processes.

Digital transformation is a popular term cropping up in many organisational strategies, including our own. But what’s it all about? I attended an excellent seminar last week that prompted me to reflect on my views on the subject.

Last week I spent a couple of days in London at the Agile Content conference. I was really keen to attend, as the conference focus seemed to be the issue that constantly challenges me in my role – how do we work together to build effective, user-focused content?

What does Richard Feynman, speaking in the early sixties know about user experience research and agile development? Quite a lot as it happens. In this little clip he hits the nail right on the head, and as web publishers in higher education it’s nice to take inspiration from world-renowned academics once in a while…