University of St Andrews

Article — 22 August 2022 — 1,698 words

12 years in higher education web and user experience management

Work: Learn Foundations, SRUC — Scotland’s Rural College, Study at St Andrews website, The University of Edinburgh, University of St Andrews, User Vision

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.

Article — 24 July 2018 — 879 words

How I learnt to embrace handwriting, sketching and sticking stuff on walls

Digital — Human-centred approaches — User experience — User research

Work: API Service user research

Working on walls is an unbeatable way to create ideas as well as communicating them. But I learnt that lesson the hard way.

Article — 22 April 2017 — 767 words

Pastures new

Digital — Personal

Work: SRUC — Scotland’s Rural College, The University of Edinburgh

After almost two years at SRUC (Scotland’s Rural College), I have decided to move on. The opportunity to work with the University of Edinburgh Website Programme was too good to ignore.

Article — 26 July 2016 — 1,679 words

Reflections on IWMW16

Digital — Web

Work: SRUC — Scotland’s Rural College

My highlights from the the Institutional Web Management Workshop, the valuable annual conference for (mostly) higher education web managers.

Article — 2 July 2016 — 671 words

Building a digital team (almost) from scratch – IWMW16 plenary session P6

Digital

Work: SRUC — Scotland’s Rural College

I was delighted to be given the opportunity to speak to my colleagues last week at IWMW 2016, the Institutional Web Management Workshop. I spoke about my experience building new teams at the University of St Andrews and SRUC.

Article — 1 June 2015 — 561 words

Moving on

Personal — Web

Work: University of St Andrews

Today I have started a new job. After over five years, I have left the University of St Andrews. I am now the web manager at SRUC in Edinburgh.

Article — 14 March 2014 — 259 words

Website launch: Study at St Andrews

User experience — Web

Work: Study at St Andrews website

For the past 12 months, I have been working on the new Study at St Andrews website, a full replacement for the webpages aimed at prospective students of the University of St Andrews.

Article — 25 January 2014 — 124 words

Updates from work: University of St Andrews digital communications team

Web

Work: Study at St Andrews website, University of St Andrews

It has been an interesting year at work, and now the digital communications team has a blog.

Article — 11 January 2012 — 325 words

The newfangled apostrophe

Culture — Current affairs

Outrage has broken out among pedants everywhere, as it was revealed that Waterstones has dropped the apostrophe from its name. Waterstones is hardly the first business to make this move. For instance, Woolworths was, up until the 1980s, called Woolworth. But people called it Woolworths, so the company adopted it. Note how many people also […]

Article — 6 December 2009 — 456 words

There is a good reason for the lack of updates

Personal — Web

I don’t often write about myself here these days. Despite the fact that I went to all the effort to set up a personal website, I do think it is a tad self-indulgent to bang on about myself. However, some readers may be interested in recent developments in my life. Regular readers will know that […]