Yesterday we held the first of hopefully many lunchtime UX meetup sessions for colleagues interested in making websites, products and services for useful and user-friendly. We started with a seminar on guerrilla user research from Marty Dunlop, before spending 45 minutes in a lively debate of topics chosen by the group.

The latest UX Showcase session held on 13 October outlined the recent activity surrounding our user experience services. This was our second such event, and it was great to see a wide range of attendees continuing to demonstrate their interest in the UX activities happening at the University.

Join us to learn about impromptu, informal “guerrilla” user research and discuss your work with colleagues at our first lunchtime meet-up for staff interested in improving services and experiences. We’ll be in Argyle House on Wednesday 18 October, 12:30 til 2.

We’re running another informal briefing and networking event centred around user experience-related services and activities happening at the moment. You can book a place for the session happening at Argyle House, Friday 13 October 14:30.

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.

This summer we worked with IS Helpline, Student Induction and Student Systems to improve our digital provision for new students.

The University provides access for staff and students to a wealth of online learning through Lynda.com. I’ve been working my way through much of the UX provision and can strongly recommend a playlist I compiled of sessions by Chris Nodder.

This week we ran our first event to showcase the work of the pilot User Experience Service and associated areas like EdGEL and strategy development. At this session I wanted to try a different approach, encouraging dialogue about our work-in-progress, rather than one-way dissemination.

This week I gave an update on the pilot User Experience Services to the board overseeing all areas involved in the Digital Transformation portfolio. In this post, I’m sharing the slides, plus a transcript of what I talked through.

Our tech team recently did some great work for IS Helpline, creating a bespoke webform that directs users to self-serve before submitting an enquiry. The form itself, though, isn’t what will ultimately help reduce support calls—it’s an iterative process of user testing, editorial improvements and analysis.