Our team has relocated, starting Monday 21 November, to Argyle House, near the Edinburgh College of Art Lauriston campus. This will provide us with an opportunity to collaborate closer with colleagues in LTW and other ISG divisions, while taking advantage of the new facilities.

It was three exciting and productive years for our team at 21 Buccleuch Place (3rd and 4th floors). During our time there, Polopoly was replaced with EdWeb, the University Website underwent a radical design change focusing on device flexibility and our service provision and consultancy services were scaled up to reflect this brave new world.

Working together

Throughout the years, our team has established close relationships with several other areas in ISG. Both within the Learning, Teaching and Web Services (LTW) division as well as with other areas like Applications and User Services Division (USD). Since LTW was created a couple of years ago, we haven’t enjoyed the benefits of sharing the same location. Other teams have been located to a variety of locations in the central and Holyrood campuses – until now.

A view of the Argyle House level H West wing. UWP occupy the far end of the area, 12 places in total.

By moving to Argyle House, there will be direct access to many colleagues in ISG. It will be a lot easier and quicker to climb a few flights of stairs instead of going through the 15 minute walk to, and back from, Dalhousie Land. Teams we collaborate closely with and will be colocating in Argyle House are:

• LTW Web Graphics and Interaction & Digital Learning Applications and Media, in the areas of delivering web and media services
• Applications’ Production Management, Project Management, Development services & Service Management, in running projects and hosting web services
• USD Help Services & User support, in supporting users and providing guidance

Overall, this move is expected to provide opportunities for our team to:

• work together towards commonly set goals, like the delivery of a streamlined digital user experience
• collaborate in projects, as we have most successfully did during the delivery of EdWeb and the new University Website
• Share knowledge and opinions, to build a better and more complete skill set in different areas
• have a better understanding of activities and projects in ISG

Same outside, all new inside

It might have been cited as one of Edinburgh’s “ugliest buildings”, but Argyle House is located in a premium location of the capital. It’s very close to both Waverley and Haymarket train stations, the historic Grassmarket and the busy West End provides a lot of opportunities to create new relationships with non-University areas. Furthermore, the interior spaces of Argyle House have been renovated and designed so as to reflect on the needs of ISG. Big open plan desk spaces are quite a change from the Buccleuch Place flats, but can certainly create a creative vibe to walk into every morning.

The Argyle House staff room is located at level H. Apart from providing a nice environment to have lunch with colleagues, it hosts a number of collaboration booths.

To enable better collaboration, a lot of thought has been given in introducing lots of flexible spaces: catch-up points, 4-6 people meet-up booths, team collaboration spaces and a common ISG staff room have been designed to take most advantage of the opportunities that this move provides. Even though it might take some time to adjust to all of this, we are all very keen to make the most out of this exciting new space.

Full contact details, map and directions for the University Website Programme

New arrangements for our training and support services – read Duncan’s recent blog post