We’ll be introducing a few refinements to the new website design on the smallest screen sizes in the near future. This week we’ve been parallel testing three versions with staff and students around the campus.

I’ve been working with Paul Johnson (who works in another team in our Learning, Teaching and Web Division primarily looking after MyEd) and long time collaborator and design lead, Steven Ross (who is based in Communications and Marketing) in the evolution of mobile design elements.

Our goal has been to bring webpage content more to the fore on small screens, without compromising the user’s ability to navigate and orientate themselves. It’s a tough balancing act and while content is often said to be king, on a site as large and complex as ours, knowing where you are, where you’ve come from and where you can go is also crucial.

So this week, I’ve been working with a UX consultant to test 3 alternative approaches to presenting important orientation and navigation elements. It was a busy couple of days in which we watched 10 staff and 14 students interact with a site, performing representative tasks.

A write up will be coming next week, and I look forward to being able to share the next round of incremental improvements to the design soon.