Category: User experience
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Getting to the root causes of usability errors and accessibility problems
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Perception–Cognition–Action (PCA) analysis is a method of uncovering the root causes of usability errors and accessibility challenges in systems. Read my article to learn more, or come to this week’s UX Edinburgh meetup to hear me speak about it.
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Speaking at UX Healthcare conference in April
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I will be speaking at the UX Healthcare conference in London on Friday 12 April. Book now to learn about using Perception-Cognition-Action analysis to improve accessibility and outcomes in healthcare products.
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12 years in higher education web and user experience management
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Today I have started a new job. But while I’m looking forward, I have also been reflecting, as this moment marks my first real move away from higher education. Despite the differing natures of the three organisations I worked for, there were many parallels across them.
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Nudge in user experience — Website and Communications Blog
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Over the summer my user experience team at the University of Edinburgh had the wonderful opportunity to work with a Behavioural Insights (Nudge) Intern. There are lots of parallels between behavioural science and human-centred approaches. Nudge models give us the opportunity to bring an extra level of formality to our approaches. Working with a behavioural […]
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From personas to behaviour modes — Website and Communications Blog
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This post on my team’s blog outlines why and how we have moved away from using personas to behavioural archetypes. Existing personas had served the team well for over 10 years. But with our work to reimagine the future of our web services, and our attention turning to the development of a new Web Publishing […]
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How often do YOU buy Valentine’s Day gifts?
How often do *you* buy Valentine’s Day gifts? More often than once a week? Less often than once a month? Stop making people complete terrible surveys that you won’t even be able to interpret the results of!
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UX in universities — UX Soup
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I have been interviewed for the podcast UX Soup. The host Chris Schreiner was interested in the User Experience Service’s work at the University of Edinburgh. He spoke with me about: how the consultancy model works in a higher education context the history of our service the projects we get involved with the methodologies we […]
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Overlaps between user experience and other disciplines — a benefit, not a problem
Have you ever been told that by doing human-centred work you’re stepping on someone else’s toes? I have heard it a number of times. More and more people are exploring the apparent overlaps between human-centred approaches and other disciplines.
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Ask us anything — UX Glasgow
Join me at next week’s UX Glasgow ask us anything event. I will be on a panel of eight human-centred professionals answering your burning questions about user experience, interaction design, user research, content design and service design. You’ll have the opportunity to join two or three breakout sessions with rooms for your choice of topic. […]
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Demonstrating the impact of human-centred approaches — Further reflections from the UCD Gathering conference — Website and Communications Blog
The second of my two posts on my work team’s blog about UCD Gathering, the remote conference I attended in October. This blog post covers the third theme I wanted to highlight: how we can better demonstrate the business impact of human-centred approaches.
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Lessons on readability and bias — Reflections from the UCD Gathering conference — Website and Communications Blog
Back in October, I had the opportunity to attend the UCD Gathering conference, a new virtual event for practitioners of user-centred design in all its forms. Over on my work blog, I have published the first of two posts reflecting on what I learned. This first post covers two themes: Being aware of bias, and […]
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Beginner’s guide to content design
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Many people are intrigued by content design but unsure if it’s the right fit for them. So here is my beginner’s guide to being a content designer. Find out why it might be a better fit for you than you might think — and why it might not be.
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Service design special — UX Glasgow
I will be speaking at next week’s UX Glasgow meetup, which is a service design special coinciding with Services Week.
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Access for all — my final plea for human-centred design — Lizzie Cass-Maran — Website and Communications Blog
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Last month our brilliant colleague Lizzie Cass-Maran left our team after more than 10 years. In her final blog post for our team’s blog, she has written this plea to keep humans at the centre of all our decision-making. For the past few years I’ve been working with Lizzie, I’ve always been impressed at the […]
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The UX sense of service — Carrie Neill interviewing Cyd Harrell — dscout
This interview with the civic tech leader Cyd Harrell covers interesting ground around user experience, including: the differences between the public and private sectors making privacy a priority avoiding “attention theft”, where we bombard users with more and more notifications
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Vote by mail: Mistakes are too easy — Kara Pernice — Nielsen Norman Group
An analysis of the design of postal voting materials in the US. Where are all the UX designers and researchers, service designers, and content writers and editors when voting process and materials are designed? Not there or simply beaten by bureaucracy or deadlines? A good reminder that user experience goes way beyond technology and even […]
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A service design approach to improving student experience
Slides from my UCD Gathering talk on Thursday 15 October 2020, about the work we’ve been doing at the University of Edinburgh to improve the experience of students and staff working with course materials digitally.
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Meeting the challenges of collaborating remotely — Website and Communications Blog
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I realised that while the summer got pretty busy for us, there are a few work blog posts that I haven’t cross-posted here yet. So I will drip-feed them here over the next little while. This first one is from July, where I outlined some of the lessons we have been learning from getting collaborative […]
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UX design’s UX design problem
How a chat at a conference underlined that user experience itself has a user experience problem — and what we can do about it.
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Speaking at UCD Gathering
I’m pleased to be speaking at UCD Gathering, a new virtual conference taking place on 15 and 16 October, about my team’s service design approach to improving the way staff use our virtual learning environment to better meet students’ needs.
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UX Diary — Helen Wiles
Keep an eye on this impressive blog. Join Helen Wiles and explore the world of user experience. This blog is quite new, but already there are brilliant articles on topics like: Recruiting a representative sample of participants Conducting remote usability testing The difference between empathy and sympathy They are all written in a very accessible […]
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Service design and the Mario complex
At Service Design in Government, I discovered that service designers see themselves as Mario. But that is an unrealistic model for what service design should be.
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How we do user research analysis at the Heritage Fund — Jo Arthur — Doing Service Design at the National Lottery Heritage Fund
A write-up of a brilliant talk Jo Arthur gave at this month’s UX Glasgow event, where she outlined how the National Lottery Heritage Fund analyse user research remotely. I found it super useful, not least because this is exactly what we need to do at my work right now, and I have taken a lot […]
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Ignore the customer experience, lose a billion dollars (Walmart case study) — Good Experience
This case study would be seen by some as a reason not to understand users at all. “If I asked users what they wanted, they’d say faster horses. Hurr hurr.” In fact, like the idea of faster horses, it demonstrates how important it is to understand your users in the right way, not just pay […]
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Undemocratising user research — Saswati Saha Mitra — UX Collective
This piece really challenged my thinking. In my job I am currently trying to figure out ways to make quality user research scale across the organisation in a sustainable manner. It’s like one of those triangular diagrams outlining three goals: “you can have two of these things”. Working in such a large organisation, central resources […]
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We’re hiring a Senior Content Designer — Website and Communications Blog
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The University of Edinburgh Website and Communications team is hiring a Senior Content Designer. Come and join my team! If you’re passionate about using evidence-based approaches to create great content that meets users’ needs, we want to hear from you. Read the blog post to learn more about the position and how to apply.
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Principles and priorities — Jeremy Keith — Adactio
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What makes a good principle? How do you avoid principles that are mere motherhood and apple pie? According to Jeremy Keith, it’s all about establishing priorities. He goes on to outline the danger of prioritising the experience of developers or designers above the user experience. He makes an interesting observation about a perceived difference in […]
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Meeting the challenges of conducting user research remotely — Website and Communications Blog
The coronavirus outbreak has posed massive challenges for everyone in society. For practitioners of human-centred approaches to design, where face-to-face interaction is often so important to enhancing our understanding, our current requirement to maintain social distancing creates obvious barriers. However, this doesn’t mean our work to ensure we’re meeting people’s needs has to stop. In […]
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The research funnel — Emma Boulton
A neat way of understanding what sorts of user research to do when, and how that maps to the double diamond. This is elaborated on by Matthew Godfrey.
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Understanding what students really need from a virtual learning environment — presented at UX Glasgow virtual meetup
This week I presented to the UX Glasgow community about our user research into the needs of students and staff working with course materials digitally at the University of Edinburgh. It was my first real experience of presenting to a live audience remotely.
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Usability test tasks to avoid — David Hamill
A short list of surprisingly common things people ask users to do during a usability test — and what you should do instead. Not mentioned in this list is the idea that you can ask people just to tell you what they think of the website generally. The golden rule is: “Try to simulate reality”.
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Content strategy: Beware the chatty tone of voice — Lauren Ellis — Humanising Technology Blog
The perils of using an overly-familiar tone of voice in your copy. There are some cracking examples here of support content that prioritises daft quips over getting to the point. You’ve ordered a package and you want to know how long delivery will take. It’s a straight forward question, so you would expect to find […]
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Join our team as a Content Designer — Website and Communications Blog
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Come and work with our team! We are looking for three experienced Content Designers to join the University of Edinburgh’s Website and Communications team as we embark on major projects to launch our new web publishing platform and services. If you’re passionate about using evidence-based approaches to create great content that meets users’ needs, we […]
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UX research — A conversation with focus — Chris Spalton — UX Planet
This is possibly the best explanation I’ve seen of how to conduct user research interviews. This framework could be given to almost everyone, and they would be on their way to conducting good interviews. It includes a very useful diagram outlining how to structure the interview — when to be open, and when to narrow […]
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Journalism and design: Building solutions to our greatest challenges — Catherine Woodiwiss — Modernist Studio
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An exploration of the similarities and differences between journalism and design, and how the two disciplines can support each other. Like journalists, designers research human behaviour, through interview and observation, in an attempt to understand complex problems… But where journalists focus on content, designers focus on experience — what and who the content is for, […]
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Moves to modern research: A new maturity model for user-centric organisations — Michael Winnick and Mac Hasley — dscout
A useful guide for those of us trying to push user research forward in our organisations.
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I’ll be speaking at UX Scotland 2020
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The session will outline the comprehensive programme of user research the University of Edinburgh’s User Experience Service conducted on behalf of the Learn Foundations project. It will show how, as the project went along, we adopted a service design approach in order to better meet the needs of both students and staff.
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The false paradox — accessibility and aesthetics
Accessibility and aesthetics are not in conflict, despite the claims of some.
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Types of design focus — Ben Holliday
Useful definitions outlining the differences between user-centred design, person-centred design and human-centred design. If user-centred design is more functional in terms of understanding and meeting needs. Person-centred design is more holistic. This means that it’s more focussed on emotional needs and goals. Human-centred design is then about thinking beyond individual needs and more towards the […]
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We’re looking for a PhD student intern to work with us next year. This is an exciting time to join our team, and an opportunity to help us improve high-profile web services like MyEd and the University website.
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We’re looking for a University of Edinburgh PhD student intern to work with us next year. This is an exciting time to join the Website and Communications team, and an opportunity to help us improve high-profile web services like MyEd and the University website. Take a look!
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I’ll be speaking at the next IxDA Scotland community meetup about our user research with the Learn Foundations project
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I’ll be speaking at the next IxDA Scotland community meetup about our user research with the Learn Foundations project. Duncan’s talk will take us through how the University of Edinburgh’s User Experience Service has undertaken a comprehensive programme of user research supporting a project aimed at improving students’ experience accessing course materials digitally. Find out […]
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Get out of your comfort zone and talk with people
To do good stuff, you have to get out of your comfort zone. 10 years ago, just before I got my first job after graduating, I was a scared person. I still am.