Last week we hosted the Public Sector Design Community at Argyle House. Attendees shared the research or design book, podcast or talk that’s influenced their career.

Our next lunchtime meetup for staff interested in user experience-related matters is Wednesday 3rd October, with Nicola Dobiecka providing an overview of user research facilitation.

We’re hosting the next meetup of the Public Sector Design Community on Tuesday 9 October. This is a great (and free!) opportunity to meet and learn from colleagues working in user research and service design in places like the Scottish Government and Registers of Scotland, amongst others.

Last week I had the pleasure of presenting a short session on Lean UX at the Edinburgh User Experience meet up. If you’re local, I recommend joining in as it’s a great way to connect with a wide range of people working in the area.

If you’re familiar with higher education, you’ll know that it’s a broad and varied sector. This is no more true than in a university as large, old and research-focused as Edinburgh. And supporting our university by working in user research and experience design in Information Services right now is a challenging and interesting prospect.

We run a lot of workshops and facilitate a lot of design thinking activities. Sometimes we struggle for meeting rooms when running something at short notice but actually, I enjoy working in impromptu and open spaces. Here’s why…

At this month’s Web Publishers’ Community session talks covered user experience; GDPR compliance in EdWeb; how to check if a Google Analytics implementation is working; and how the EdWeb cookie consent banner works.

If you’re interested in predicting the future, our next lunchtime UX meetup is for you. Find out how adopting a user-centred approach to developing services and experiences can help you get ahead of the curve.

I recently ran a one-day workshop for IS web editors focused on teaching them how to iteratively improve their digital content so users are able to self-serve on their site. The event was a great success, with attendees leaving with an appreciation for what it takes to create user-focused content.

It’s just over a year since we trialled our first user experience training package. We’ve run the sessions 4 times now, receiving excellent feedback from attendees and refining the provision each time to better meet staff needs.