The Portal Services Continuous Improvement project is working to improve MyEd and Notifications, and make them easier to use. Recently, we made some changes to make it easier to see when you have Notifications to check and make it easier to access your Favourites, particularly when using a mobile device.

Why was this change needed?

Notifications were not as obvious as they could be

Notifications are shown on the MyEd homepage, and are alerts about tasks you have to do, such as paying fees, or reminders about important information like upcoming exams. Research with students showed us that they didn’t always see that they had notifications, and that it wasn’t obvious to them when they had new notifications.  

It’s hard to see when notifications change

Favourites were hard to access on mobile devices

Favourites allow users to easily access the content you use most often, by favouriting items so that they appear on the MyEd homepage.  Favourites are easy to access when you are using a desktop or laptop, but it’s not so easy if you are using a mobile device with a small screen. When we tested the mobile view of MyEd with students we could see that they typically had to scroll through the content on the home page multiple times before they could locate their Favourites.

What did we change?

New notifications icon

Previously the notification icon was the same colour as all the other options in the heading area, and the only change to show a notification was present was a change to the number next to the icon. We changed the icon to make it more visible, and also changed the behaviour to make it clearer when there are notifications, so that it is easier for you to see when you need to check your notifications.

Favourites shortcut

We added a shortcut to the header area in MyEd which takes users directly to the Favourites section.  This means you can access Favourites without having to scroll through any other content.