The document summarizes Kat Husband's presentation on improving the user experience (UX) of navigating the Moodle learning management system. It discusses research conducted with students and staff through touchstone tours and observations to understand pain points. Recommendations were made to simplify navigation, use consistent formatting across courses, and define naming conventions. Further research will assess the impact of changes and focus on underserved groups like disabled students. Attendees were encouraged to adopt UX best practices like switching perspectives to improve the student experience on Moodle.

1. The UX of navigating Moodle
Kat Husbands, UX Content Specialist
SMUG Meet, 7 June 2019

2. The CONCEPT of UX
“User experience encompasses
all aspects of a user’s interaction
with a company, its services, and its
products.”
Donald A. Norman
Design Lab Director, UC San Diego
The FIELD of UX
“Bringing together user needs
and business goals through
research, design and testing.”
Neil Scott
Glasgow-based UX Designer
UX = User eXperience

3. What is UX?
UX Week motto

4. Research methods
• Touchstone Tours with 8 students
• Review of related research
• Workshop with key staff
Moodle upgrade 2018
Recommendations
• 11 technical - 6 implemented
• 4 hybrid - 1 implemented
• 6 best practice

5. 55%
Agree
43.9%
33.3%
Neutral
37.3%
11.7%
Disagree
18.8%
2018-19
2017-18
I can easily find things on the VLE
Impact
Jisc Student Digital Experience Survey

6. • First cross-college TELT meet-up in 5 years!
• They defined 4 key UX priorities for 2019 upgrade
• VLE Dev Board gave us remit to improve navigation
December 2018

7. Dedicated budget!
January - March 2019
Research methods
• Touchstone Tours with 7 students and 4 staff
• 13 staff observed sessions
Recommendations for 2019 upgrade
• 16 technical - 11 to be implemented
• 4 best practice - 2 in progress

8. • New dashboard
• Simpler header and breadcrumbs
• More helpful left navigation panel
• Clearer text formatting in main page body
• Better default settings for Collapsed Topics format
Technical changes in 2019 upgrade

9. Use Collapsed Topics format
"If you could customise your Moodle the way
you want…without putting the onus on the
person who sets it up to fix it one way or the
other...I wish I had the option to see it laid
out the way I prefer” (Participant 046)
Best practice recommendation
#1

10. “It takes a lot of time to
understand Moodle. You need
to discover how your teacher
thinks every time you get into a
class, because every teacher
uses Moodle in a different
way.” (P054)
“It'd be nice if there was one
general layout so you always
know where to look for the
stuff…new learning curve per
Moodle…I find it overwhelming
sometimes…” (P046)
“This is how THIS lecturer has
laid things out for us…I ask in
the student rep forums if all the
teachers can follow one common
way because sometimes it's
really confusing…each teacher
has a different way of
uploading things” (P045)
"This is like shorthand
buttons…it doesn't take me to a
separate page [tone implying
that would be bad!] it just
rearranges the page to focus on
the part we want to interact
with“ (P052)
“I don't like it when they collapse
a lot of the stuff, I just want to
scroll. [Grid format] is sort of
blocked: I feel like it's harder to
see the stuff!” (P046)
“I like [Topics format]: all the
information is in one place and I
can just keep scrolling…I find
this much easier” (P045)
“I've really enjoyed working with
this one - everything was in one
page - that was fantastic!”
(P053)
More quotes on formats & (in)consistency

11. Scroll of death
Scroll of findability!
uxmyths.com

12. Best practice recommendation
#2
Don’t use Show one
section per page setting in
Topics / Weekly format
"You have to scroll down a lot before
finding what you actually need"
(Participant 051)

13. Set naming conventions for:
• Course titles & short names
• Abbreviation styles
• Word order: where/how to include
session and course code
• How to distinguish between academic
courses, programme common rooms,
one-off training courses etc
• Common sections/links
Best practice recommendation
#3
"I don't know if this will
happen to other part-timers
but I think my Moodle
[course list / dashboard] is
more messy than other
people’s” (Participant 053)

14. Define & share best practice
around visible vs. separate
groups & links
Best practice recommendation
#4

15. • User research to measure impact of changes
• Research with disabled students
• Do it all again for 2020 upgrade and beyond…
What we’ll do next

16. • Consider whether any of these recommendations might
improve the Moodle UX for your students and colleagues
• Switch role to student regularly and encourage others to
do the same
• Consider how to reach unengaged course staff
• Run / observe / take part in user research and testing
What you can do

17. Thank you! Any questions?
UX Framework: gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/ux
Kat.Husbands@glasgow.ac.uk