In the latest user-focused lunchtime meetup, Chris Giles, Lillie McEnteer and Richard Arkless from Student Systems gave an inspiring talk on what they took away from a Lean in Higher Education conference, and Neil Allison gave a presentation on the principles of Lean UX methodology.

The next lunchtime meetup is on Thursday 28 March. Our focus in this session is Lean. Colleagues from Student Systems join us to share what they took away from a recent Lean in Higher Education conference, and Neil Allison will talk about the Lean UX methodology.

We were recently involved in a project to support ESPA (Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation) in creating proto-personas to inform the redevelopment of their website.

I’m in the middle of reading the new book by Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden: Sense and Respond. I’ve finding it pretty inspirational and yesterday at our Web Publishers Community session a short webinar on the topic prompted some interesting conversation.

In recent months I’ve been investigating the Kano model, which is a way to plan and prioritise features of a product to better meet user expectations. After discussing with the team, we decided to try it out through the planning process for some upcoming EdWeb CMS features.

Reaching consensus on the ideal user experience can be challenging. It’s even harder when the product doesn’t exist yet. I’ve been helping the Cityscope development team focus their attentions to deliver something that’s both useful and easy to use.

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.

Once again we’re contributing to the annual UK Higher Education web managers conference, IWMW. It’s a great opportunity to learn from and network with colleagues in our sector, and we’re encouraging staff here in Edinburgh to join us at Liverpool John Moores University, 21-23 June.

I was watching a presentation by Lean UX author, Jeff Gothelf, and a point he made about user-focused development – taking small steps, sensing and responding – really struck with me. So much so, I’ve written a bit of it up to share here.

Earlier this week I was supporting our CIO, Gavin McLachlan, as he ran a session on digital transformation for managers within Information Services. The presentation and mini-workshop went down very well, prompting lots of discussion and enthusiastic collaboration. Listening to Gavin’s message prompted me to pull together some thoughts and resources on the subject.