On Thursday 7 November 2109, I was asked to speak at the Squiz Summit on how we promote the work we do with our search engine, and how we analyse the performance of search. I realised I hadn’t blogged it previously, so thought I’d summarise here.
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” said Benjamin Franklin – and he was a smart guy. In this post, I’ll outline the preparations we’ve undertaken in case the worst should happen and one of our priority services fails.
I’ve been thinking about the ways in which we align our digital products with wider strategic direction, and how we can measure whether the changes we make are working for our users and customers. In particular, I’ve been considering how we can make data-informed decisions about the University’s search service.
An inspiring day in Manchester underlined the importance of remembering the human beings at the heart of our work.
At this week’s user-focused meetup, around 20 people came to hear me speak about my reflections on studying for a PDA in Service Design with the Service Design Academy.
On the 3rd of September, while most of the country was eagerly waiting to hear about the results from the parliamentary vote, OpenUK was having its events launch in the Thames Pavillion only a few yards away from all the action.
Open Edinburgh – a celebration of open source – was an event organised by Ritwik Sarkar, a 3rd year Computer Science with Management student, as part of his summer internship as the Open Source Web Development Community Champion with our team.
At September’s Web Publishers, we did a group card sort as part of our project overhauling the Editorial Style Guide. We had some workshop time at last month’s Web Publishers, and I used it to establish some basic information about how people engage with the Editorial Style Guide.
Throughout 2018/2019, the User Experience Service has been collaborating with the Learn Foundations project team to undertake a comprehensive programme of user research with students and staff. Through this we have discovered how students’ experience in Learn is closely intertwined with how staff work with it. This post summarises all our work, and outlines how we have ended up taking a service design approach.
As part of our comprehensive programme of user research in support of the Learn Foundations project, the User Experience Service has conducted contextual enquiry to better understand the contexts and needs of staff members working with Learn.
