The document discusses an engaging session focused on user experience (UX) strategies and development at the University of Edinburgh, highlighting the importance of human-centered design, digital standards, and training. It emphasizes the benefits of UX services on customer satisfaction, reduced development costs, and improved compliance with legal standards. The session also covers specific projects such as extending the Edgel platform for social media sharing and introduces UX training initiatives to cultivate a user-centric organizational culture.

1. Welcome
While you wait:
Add a post-it to the wall to say
what you’d like to get out of this session

2. Engaging & understanding
our users
User Experience Service Showcase
27 June 2017

3. Lightening talks
• The new UX service: Why do we need it, and what's new here?
• Human Centred Design: changing our approach to engaging with users to deliver
products and services that meet expectations
• Digital standards: appraising how we develop and deliver digital products and services to
students
• EdGEL case study: Extending EdGEL to support introduction of social media sharing to
the website
• UX training: building a community of practice to raise our UX maturity as an organisation
• Digital strategy development: where UX fits into a broader look at the University's digital
strategy

4. Learn more…
• Human Centred Design process
• Digital standards and our draft
principles
• EdGEL development workflow
• UX training
• Explore the materials
on the walls
• Ask questions
• Contribute
...or just have a coffee and
network with colleagues

5. What makes a good User Experience?

6. What makes a good User Experience?

7. What makes a good User Experience?

8. What makes a good User Experience?

9. Why are UX Services needed?
• We’re investing a lot in major digital
change initiatives
• We want to maximise the impact of this
investment on the user experience
• We are seeking to:
“…adopt new ways of working in order to
continue delivering our mission in the face
of changing technology, competition,
audience need and behaviour.”

10. But the benefits of UX go beyond users…
• Increased customer satisfaction
with our products by avoiding
building things that audiences
don't want
• Reduced user support overheads
because products and processes
are easier to use and optimized for
self service
• Distributed time savings as it
becomes quicker to perform tasks
• Faster, cheaper design and
development through use of
common patterns & standards
• Reduced development costs,
getting more right first time
through better communication and
specification
• Greater assurance of compliance
with legislation such as accessibility
and data privacy

11. UX Services
Standards
EdGEL
Evidence based: EdGEL
evolves based on user
insight, not just designer
opinion.
Efficient: UX Services
don’t unnecessarily repeat
work on multiple projects
because insight feeds into
EdGEL
User first: Standards are
built on design processes
led by UX Services
Risk management: User
insight guaranteed
because standards
mandate it throughout
development
Quality assurance:
Content in EdGEL is a
critical pillar of the
standards
Consistency: EdGEL is
utilised because standards
mandate it
The 3 elements
are essential to
deliver enhanced
experiences
consistently &
efficiently, and to
influence change
towards a more
customer-centric
organisational
culture

12. Broadening our focus
A student’s life
Student life
at University
University business
We traditionally
focus the vast
majority of our
requirements-
gathering
attention here
We sometimes
give some
attention here
while in
development

13. Initial position: Absent to
Informal
By end of 2016/17 in IS:
Recognised
By end of 2018/19: Managed
Target organisational maturity
Source: Abi Reynolds, www.uservision.co.uk

14. What is Human Centered Design?
“Human-centered design (HCD) is a
design and management framework
that develops solutions to problems
by involving the human perspective
in all steps of the problem-solving process.”
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-centered_design

15. People Technology
Business

16. What is a Human Centered Design process
and why should we use it?
• Users are involved in all stages of the design process
• Multidisciplinary thinking and making
• Divergent and convergent thinking
• Evidence based decision making
• Iterative making

17. What have we done so far?

18. 1. Design Council
2.Bill Buxton
3. User centered Design
4. Daniel Newman
5. D.School Stanford

19. First iteration
• We collected feedback
through informal sit-downs
and meetings at the wall
• Staff from in various roles:
• Service Managers
• Project Managers
• Business Analysts
• Administrators

20. Trends in feedback
• Too detailed
• Not applicable to the reality of the University
• Language not familiar
• Recognise some tools
• How is it different to what we already do?

21. Second
iteration of
design
process
Collection of feedback
reflecting cultural
practice
within the
organisation

22. WHAT IS THE PROBLEM I
NEED TO SOLVE?
HOW DOES THE HCD-PROCESS
SOLVE THE PROBLEM/OFFER
IMPROVEMENT?
WHAT ARE THE OUTCOMES?
WHY IS IT DIFFERENT FROM
WHAT WE CURRENTLY DO?

23. SKILLS
REQUIRED
METHODS
OUTPUTS
BUSINESS
OUTCOMES

24. Talk to me!
When would you use it?
How do you see this fitting in with what you are currently doing?
Do you recognise skills/tools/methods in the process?
What business outcomes are most important?

25. Design Principles & Standards
The UX service aims to establish methods and
best practices toward user-centred design.
To do this we need to offer:
• Principles
• Standards
These will give value as both guidance and
governance toward user centric projects.

26. Design Principles & Standards
Why
In order to on-board and drive the ethos of user-centred practice, the
design principles & standards are proposed to:
• Guide projects toward a user centred
approach, from idea to deployment
• Govern the implementation of user centred
methods and best practices
• Create metrics and checkpoints within a
project in order to maintain value

27. Design Principles & Standards
• Principles
The principles are based on a survey conducted within the university in
September 2016 [http://bit.ly/UoE-principles-survey]. They were later refined and
structured in order to better align with the context of the university.
ex. Design using robust evidence of user needs
Advocating the importance and value of user research, especially when defining
what is actually required of a system.

28. Design Principles & Standards
• Standards
Each principle has a collection of standards that sit within it. They can be
described as the ‘action’ or the ’outcome’ from the principle.
They can also be the detail towards a metric within a project.
ex. Gather user needs from target audience
The action to take toward gaining evidence for a user need. Methods and best
practices can be held within this.

29. Design Principles & Standards
Input & Feedback
• Who do you believe they will benefit in the long run?
• What would you suggest as an addition to principle or standard?
• Where do you see these being of most value?
• How would you interpret the proposed principles?
Ready to view and comment on straight after the session

30. THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
27th June 2017 Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
EdGEL case study:
Extending EdGEL to support introduction of
social media sharing to the website
Billy Wardrop
Website and Communications
(University Website Programme)

31. THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
EdGEL case study:
27 June 2017 Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Project brief
”Allow content on the University Website to
be shared through social media buttons”

32. THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
EdGEL case study:
27 June 2017 Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Review EdGel
• EdGel website > Page Components
• Social media buttons didn't exist

33. THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
EdGEL case study:
27 June 2017 Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Component Specification
• What they would look like
• How they would behave
• Separate functionality into EdGel and
EdWeb, ie content types
• How would they be reused in other
applications such as WordPress or
myEd

34. THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
EdGEL case study:
27 June 2017 Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Built my Component (STATIC)
• Graphic Design Approval
• Defined the button behaviours based
on each social channel
• Built a static HTML Version

35. THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
EdGEL case study:
27 June 2017 Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
EdGel Technical Process
• Forked the GEL code from gitlab
• Added custom CSS to LESS files
• Added Custom JS
• Created HTML as per the testing Structure
• Compiled the code
• Ran the automated tests
• Submitted my code back to the EdGel Repo

36. THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
EdGEL case study:
27 June 2017 Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
EdWeb
• My was code merged into GEL
• EdWeb Theme updated
• Developed EdWeb functionality
• Deployed to EdWeb TEST
• Deployed to EdWeb LIVE next week

37. THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
EdGEL case study:
27 June 2017 Extending EdGEL to support social media sharing
Dynamic Content
The EdGel Process

38. UX Training
Supporting change through education & empowerment

39. Everybody is responsible for UX
Everybody is responsible for the user experience.
We need to get to a place where UX empathy, curiosity,
communication is just part of a basic skills set.
Imagine if we were talking about writing. How crazy
would it be to expect one person on the team to do all
the work when stuff needed writing down?
If we silo the UX function, we will fail:
• To change culture to become more user centric
• To provide enough resource to undertake a
truly human-centred process
• To get best value out of UX specialists

40. "Usability is like cooking:
everybody needs the results,
anybody can do it reasonably well
with a bit of training,
and yet it takes a master to
produce a gourmet outcome.”
Jakob Nielsen

41. UX training
• Being run July 2017 for Digital Transformation,
Service Excellence and IS Applications staff
• 6 half-day modules over 3 days:
• Usability testing
• Collaborative review
• Workshopping
• Personas
• Journey maps
• Prototyping

42. HCD methods covered in UX training

43. Design Thinking on Lynda.com
• Search for Chris Nodder
• Design thinking:
• Understanding the process
• Implementing the process
• UX Design series

44. Talk to me
Questions about the training?
Register interest for future sessions or sign up

45. Web Strategy & Governance
UX Open Event
Colan Mehaffey
Head of Web Strategy & Technologies
June 2017

46. OVERVIEW
Develop and champion a new strategy and vision for how the
University use web technologies to:
• enhance students' digital experience
• disseminate our best research
• engage with our diverse audiences
Develop & emplace a new web governance model to:
• ensure effective decision making in the management of web assets
• address current issues
• support the delivery of the web strategy
• establish common design and technology standards, processes and
performance metrics which can be applied across the estate

47. DEFINITION OF WEB
User-centred service delivery
enabled by web technologies

48. SCOPE OF WEB – UNDER CONSIDERATION
UserExperience
• Voice of the
Customer
• User journey
mapping
• Service design
• Persona
analysis
• Segmentation
• Personalisation
Design
• User Interface
• Information
Architecture
• Accessibility
• Usability
• Content
strategy &
production
Technology
• University
websites &
related web-
based apps
• User portals
• Third party
SaaS
• Media
platforms
Data
• Analytics
platform
• Marketing
analytics
• Performance
metrics
• Information
security
• Lifetime Value
(LTV)

49. DISCOVER DEFINE
ITERATE
BUSINESS
ANALYSIS
DESIGN,
TECHNOLOGY &
DATA
USER
EXPERIENCE
PEOPLE &
CULTURE
DELIVER
DEVELOPING THE WEB STRATEGY
MONITOR
ROAD
MAP

50. TIMELINE

51. Thank you
Stay a while: engage, network, drink the coffee…

52. “…simple relevant exercises which make sense
of how to put the [usability testing]
methodology into practice in the workplace…”

53. “A really enlightening, informative and well
structured session… I can see this
methodology becoming an important tool
in the design and development of our web
presence…”

54. “Great activities, really enjoyable as well as
useful learning…”