Successful digital projects, effective digital products and services and great user experiences need multidisciplinary collaboration. In this post I’ll go through why I value techniques that facilitate this multidisciplinary approach so highly, and how business units across the University are calling on us to help them do the same.

We have created, and continue to explore, an open system whereby developers from all over the University can write and contribute code adding new functionality to the software that runs the University website benefiting the whole University. With our third EdWeb code sprint completed the process now feels properly established. This is part of a […]

Pair writing is a speedy way to craft content — it teams up content and subject experts to write together in a 1-2 hour session. We’ve started using this process with colleagues to improve and create University web pages.

We are embarking on a collaborative initiative with IS Helpline to improve the quality of online IT support for students. This is a great opportunity for us to demonstrate the impact of continuous review and improvement processes on the student digital experience.

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.

The move to EdWeb has offered the University a unique opportunity to shift to a new, more collaborative culture and take full advantage of the available knowledge and resources. UWP have taken the initiative of mapping a development collaborative framework for EdWeb through a project co-funded by the College of Science and Engineering.

Last month I had the honour of giving the opening plenary presentation at IWMW 2016, the UK Higher Education web professionals’ conference, in Liverpool. My topic was Lean UX, or as i expressed it, why requirements are hypotheses. Video and slides are now available.

We are running extra sessions of our showcase of the Usability Testing Service so even more colleagues to learn about the value of direct user engagement by taking part in a real session. Upcoming dates look at the current student experience of IT help self service (14 June) and the prospective student experience using the […]

We’re currently doing some work to support the Student Experience Services Communications (SES Comms) project, and as part of this, we’ve been reviewing the Personal Tutors and Student Support Officers (PTs and SSOs) website.

Yesterday I ran a series of usability testing sessions that were observed by nearly 30 colleagues, most of whom are customers of our service. Some teams would want to do this in private, but not us! We’re happy to have our customers help us identify where we can improve. Plus, we’ve more usability sessions in […]