The User Experience Service at the University of Edinburgh runs training several times a year for staff involved in the development and management of digital services.

Over the course of three days colleagues from across the University take part in hands-on training in a range of techniques including usability testing, prototyping, persona development and experience mapping.

These sessions provide a safe space to try out user research and design thinking techniques. These techniques are helping us develop more useful, and more usable digital services.

We run the training because want to give colleagues from a range of disciplines exposure to key techniques they can employ back in their own projects and services.

Taking part in these sessions also paves the way for more productive engagement with our user experience consultancy service.

Colleagues are better prepared for collaborating with a user experience specialist. They’re more able to express their needs and expectations around understanding their customers and building better services.

During the last training sessions, I asked a few colleagues what they thought.

Interviewer: How have you found the training so far?

Ruth: Very good. I’ve enjoyed how interactive it is. I’ve done user experience work before with the [UX Service] team so I understand some of the processes but it’s been good to see them used in a different kind of way and to understand more of the background behind it.

Vanessa: The training has been very good and some of the concepts that I came across, I had heard before because I had taken an online course on website development which covered user experience and usability testing. And the difference between the two was that this training was a hands-on training, you are learning by doing, so I enjoyed this methodology better.

Interviewer: Any particular techniques that stand out that you’ve enjoyed?

Gavin: The usabilty was very useful. It’s going to be very interesting for bringing some of the experiences of the staff that I work with together and to try and identify what really is going on in the website and many of the systems that we’re building.

Vanessa: Another thing that I found very interesting was creating personas. As I mentioned before I’ve had theoretical experience but doing it was very interesting. Perhaps because it was set in the context of visiting your GP or clinic. I kind of sympathised with those people, it seemed quite real and I kind of wanted to help them.

Gavin: It’s been really enjoyable, it’s been interesting and well paced.