User research

Article — 27 September 2026 — 1,503 words

The LLM in the room — Going beyond using AI to do someone else’s job badly

Economics — Human-centred approaches — Society — Technology

People mostly use artificial intelligence to do the jobs they didn’t value anyway. But this amounts to cutting our colleagues out. Value must be created through human-to-human exchanges. So we should rapidly focus on uses of AI that go beyond trying to do someone else’s job badly.

Article — 21 July 2026 — 1,159 words

The third horizon of human-centred approaches

Business — Human-centred approaches — User experience

The way we work as human-centred practitioners needs to change. From its beginnings as an engineering technique, through its transition to being a product design tool, user experience now needs to be adopted as a strategic approach.

Article — 22 June 2026 — 1,837 words

Don’t make me thick

Information architecture — Society — User experience

We say “don’t make me think”, and “less is more”. But a naive application of these principles risks limiting our users when we should be helping them grow.

Article — 10 August 2022 — 1,525 words

Nudge in human-centred approaches

Economics — Service design — User experience

Work: The University of Edinburgh

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.

Article — 11 May 2022 — 838 words

Behaviour modes — Keeping personas meaningful

User experience — Web

Work: Future web services

My team have been using personas for more than a decade. But with our work to reimagine the future of our web services, we recognised that these personas needed to evolve. Behaviour modes offer a more effective way to work with personas.

Article — 29 April 2021 — 2,359 words

Lessons on readability and bias, and demonstrating the impact of human-centred approaches — Reflections from the UCD Gathering conference

Business — Digital — Human-centred approaches

Work: Learn Foundations, The University of Edinburgh

Adapted from posts originally published on the University of Edinburgh 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. Showcasing our research into staff and students’ needs around accessing course materials digitally At UCD […]

Article — 6 July 2017 — 1,076 words

Top tasks management — How to continuously measure your website’s success

User experience — Web

Work: The University of Edinburgh

Adapted from a post originally published on the University of Edinburgh Website and Communications blog. I had an opportunity to attend a masterclass held by Gerry McGovern, the pioneer of top tasks — a key user research methodology that has been used by our team for ten years. For me, as a new member of […]

Article — 10 March 2015 — 1,640 words

History of the University of St Andrews prototype homepage project

Digital — User experience — Web

Work: Prototype homepage

Adapted from a post originally published on the University of St Andrews Digital Communications team blog. The University of St Andrews prototype homepage aimed at external audiences has been unveiled this week. It is the outcome of over a year of work. It has been an eventful year for the digital communications team. One year […]