Unlabelled venn diagram

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.

Screenshot of the remotely-held UX Glasgow 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.

IxDA Scotland logo

I’ll be speaking at the next IxDA Scotland community meetup about our user research with the [Learn Foundations project](https://duncanstephen.net/tag/learn-foundations/).

> Duncan’s talk will take us through how [the University of Edinburgh’s User Experience Service](https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/user-experience) has undertaken a comprehensive programme of user research supporting a project aimed at improving students’ experience accessing course materials digitally. Find out how they developed a programme of multiple user research methods to understand what students really need.

Time: Wednesday 4 December
Venue: Amazon Development Centre, 2–4 Waterloo Place, Edinburgh

Full details about the IxDA community meetup event

Maybe see you there?

Contextual enquiry with members of staff working with course materials digitallyWebsite and Communications Blog

Staff foam board

As part of our comprehensive programme of user research in support of the Learn Foundations project, the User Experience Service has conducted contextual enquiry to better understand the contexts and needs of staff members working with Learn. This blog post summarises our findings.

First click tests — building up the elements of user experience for Learn FoundationsWebsite and Communications Blog

First click heatmap

> We had developed an information architecture and tree tests as part of our programme of user research for Learn Foundations. The next step was to use first click tests to pit the new template against existing courses.

The latest post in my series for the Website and Communications blog about our user research work around the University of Edinburgh’s virtual learning environment.

Slides from my Edinburgh UX meetup talk on Monday 2 September 2019, about the user research we have been conducting around the needs of students and staff working with course materials digitally at the University of Edinburgh. See the more detailed blog posts about this project over at the Website and Communications team blog.

I’m doing a couple of talks this week. They are both about [the user research we’ve been doing for the Learn Foundations project](https://duncanstephen.net/tag/learn-foundations/).

This evening I will be presenting at the [Edinburgh UX monthly meetup](https://www.meetup.com/Edinburgh-User-Experience-Meetup/events/ghvkllyzlbjc/). It’s a friendly meetup and it’s free, so do come along if you’re interested.

Then on Wednesday I’ll be [presenting](https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2019/sessions/a-105/) with my colleagues Karen Howie and Paul Smyth at the [Association for Learning Technology (ALT) Annual Conference](https://altc.alt.ac.uk/2019/).