At the University of Edinburgh, MyEd is a crucial tool central to the lives of both students and staff. From personal and professional experiences, I’ve observed how integral MyEd is to daily activities. Throughout the academic year I worked on the usability of the student MyEd portal to try and integrate and understand the student perspective for better overall user experience. Over the past six weeks as I transitioned into the summer phase of my internship, it has been a welcome experience to approach MyEd from the staff’s perspective. Understanding how staff interact with the portal and identifying areas for improvement is essential to making the portal as efficient and user-friendly as possible. 

What are usability tests?

Usability tests are one of the main techniques in user research. In a test, the researcher (also known as the “facilitator” or “moderator” asks participants to perform tasks. While the participant completes them the researcher observes their behaviour and listens for feedback. The chief objectives are to: 

1. Determine whether users can complete tasks successfully  
2. Assess their performance in doing so to see how well the design and content works. 
3. Identify problems 
4. See how much the user enjoys the process 
5. Find solutions. 

For this occasion, we performed Guerrilla style testing which included testing MyEd informally on colleagues within Argyle House. More can be found out about this method here: What is Guerrilla Usability Testing? (+ How To Do It)| Maze 

Procedure

Our primary focus was to assess whether the top navigation bar of MyEd is logical and user-friendly for staff members; the Portal Services team and I obtained this by conducted two rounds of usability testing with nine friendly faces around Argyle House. 

To start, we introduced the participants to the exercise. The session was 15 minutes long and required each member of staff to navigate through the MyEd homepage and perform the following tasks: 

• You want to download your payslip for last month. What would you do? 
• You need to log an issue you’ve been having with IT support, please find Unidesk. 
• You want to improve your digital skills in Data and AI Ethics. Can you find anything to help in MyEd? 
• You need to grant an extension to a student. Please find the extension and special circumstances tool. 
• You need to book a room for a project meeting with colleagues on Central Campus. How would you do this? 
• You have an online meeting and have forgotten to book the session within Collaborate virtual classroom. Please find the tool in MyEd. 
• You need to access Euclid to record your student’s exam results. Where would you look for that? 

 They were encouraged to think aloud, describing their actions and any difficulties encountered. After completing the tasks, participants reflected on their experience, rating the ease of task completion and providing feedback for improvements. 

Insights from Usability Testing

In the initial session, participants easily located payslips and P60s but encountered difficulties with more complex tasks. Terms like “UniDesk” and “Euclid” proved confusing for first-time users navigating the system. This aligns with previous research involving students, which led to the rebranding of “Euclid” as “My Student Record” within the Student MyEd site. Feedback underscored the importance of clearer descriptions and introductory pages to facilitate user interaction with these tools. 

Additionally, the session underscored the significance of content presentation on the site. For instance, users hesitated to interact with the “book” button on the Digital Skills page, affecting access to its resources. 

Following the feedback from the initial session, several adjustments were made to the navigation bar, which were subsequently tested in a second session. Changes included the reorganization of the “News and Events” section where Campus Facilities was relocated to to create “Facilities and Events”, as well as restructuring within the “Digital Skills” section. 

The second session demonstrated notable enhancements. The revised “Facilities and Events” section notably improved staff efficiency in room booking. Furthermore, the revamped layout of the Digital Skills section led to increased engagement among users seeking courses in AI and Data, with a higher success rate of Staff members clicking on the link to the SharePoint page. Participants did highlight concerns that the Email and Learn icons were oversized and underutilized, indicating a preference for customizable widgets on the homepage. While the updated navigation bar received positive feedback, challenges remained regarding the visibility of subheadings and clickable areas. 

Key Findings

1. Layout Personalization: Although Staff feel comfortable with the Homepage layout, few tend to engage with it as it does not contain Widgets, they use frequently Participants expressed a desire for a customizable homepage, allowing them to prioritize frequently used sections.  
2. Clearer Labels: Terms like “UniDesk” and “Euclid” need clearer descriptions to aid navigation. Alternatively, documentation for new staff on what these services are needs further clarification. 
3. Navigation Bar Improvements: Staff rarely engage with the menu subheadings, instead bypassing them to focus on the list items below. It was also interesting to observe that once attention was drawn to the subheadings, staff began to think more logically about the tasks, checking the banner regularly and improving their navigation accuracy. Enhancing the contrast of subheadings (or bolding the text) and making the entire clickable area of a menu item more intuitive were identified as critical changes to make MyEd more engaging. 
4. Content Organization: There is a need to streamline content and provide more detailed descriptions, particularly in sections like Digital Skills. 

Next Steps

The insights from these usability sessions have provided valuable development opportunities. For future research, we plan to conduct further top tasks exercises and further usability session involving a more diverse set of participants. Conducting usability testing for the MyEd staff portal has been an enlightening and rewarding experience. The feedback gathered will help shape a more user-friendly and efficient MyEd, ultimately benefiting the entire University of Edinburgh community. I am sad to say my journey with the Portal Services team ends here as I am writing this in my final hour as a User Research Intern within the team; what an amazing journey it has been. It is exciting that the new interns can take this work even further come September!