Article — — 2,359 words

Business — Digital — Human-centred approaches

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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 […]

Linknote — — 118 words

Service design — User experience

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Service design special — UX Glasgow

Service design illustrations

I will be speaking at next week’s UX Glasgow meetup. This month it is a service design special, coinciding with [Services Week](https://services.blog.gov.uk/2021/01/29/get-involved-in-services-week-2021/).

My presentation will be based on my blog post [Service design and the Mario complex](https://duncanstephen.net/service-design-and-the-mario-complex/), exploring the similarities and differences between user experience and service design.

It’s part of a bumper line-up of speakers, including sessions about the Scottish Approach to Service Design, some excellent research into the service design community in Scotland, and a student project imagining the future of Glasgow.

It’s a ticketed virtual event, so [sign up to be part of what should be a brilliant session](https://uxglasgow.co.uk/events/service-design-special).

Linknote — — 239 words

Business — Service design

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From 40 sets of ideas to one in 20 minutes — A collaboration experiment with the Web Publishing Community — Website and Communications Blog

Liberating Structures leaflet designed by Open Change

Here’s another post I published to my team’s blog over the summer and forgot to link to from here.

Back in June, I ran an experiment in mass remote collaboration at our Web Publishing Community. This was, of course, at the height of lockdown, as we were adapting to the new reality of a prolonged period of working from home.

[I’d come away from the Service Design in Government conference](https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/website-communications/three-highlights-from-service-design-in-government-2020/) in March really keen to try out [liberating structures](http://www.liberatingstructures.com/), following an excellent [session run by Open Change](https://www.openchangeacademy.co.uk/liberating-structures).

Liberating structures is a set of workshop tools designed to include everyone and generate innovative ideas. These are ideally carried out with people who are physically together, so it was a little awkward when I wanted to try them out just at the moment everyone was required to be physically apart.

But some liberating structures are possible to run remotely, so I decided to introduce a large number of colleagues to a foundational liberating structure — [1-2-4-all](http://www.liberatingstructures.com/1-1-2-4-all/).

Through this session, we collaboratively sifted through ideas generated by over 40 participants, before coming to a consensus on the one strongest idea.

[Read the blog post for the full details of how it worked — and what went wrong](https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/website-communications/from-40-sets-of-ideas-to-one-in-20-minutes-a-collaboration-experiment-with-the-web-publishing-community/).

Linknote — — 106 words

User experience

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Meeting the challenges of collaborating remotely — Website and Communications Blog

A Miro boards with digital sticky notes on it

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 activities done remotely. This post also highlights some of the work my colleagues have been doing to continue our user experience work despite the challenges presented by the coronavirus outbreak.

This was a follow-up to an earlier blog post, [Meeting the challenges of conducting user research remotely](https://duncanstephen.net/meeting-the-challenges-of-conducting-user-research-remotely-website-and-communications-blog/).

Article — — 934 words

User experience

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Adapted from a post originally published on the University of Edinburgh Website and Communications blog. We have recently completed a short collaboration with the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies to better understand the needs of students of online postgraduate courses. The findings may help us understand the differing needs of students online compared to […]

Article — — 1,487 words

Business — Service design

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Adapted from a post originally published on the University of Edinburgh Website and Communications blog. I recently conducted an experiment in mass remote collaboration. Using a technique called liberating structures, 40 people generated ideas, before sifting through them all and finding the strongest one — all within 20 minutes. Before the collaboration experiment, I presented […]

Linknote — — 55 words

Content design — Human-centred approaches — User experience — Web

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We’re hiring a Senior Content Designer — Website and Communications Blog

View of Edinburgh Castle from our office

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.

Article — — 906 words

Society — User experience — User research

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Adapted from a post originally published on the University of Edinburgh Website and Communications blog. The coronavirus (Covid-19) 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. […]

Article — — 100 words

Service design — User experience — User research

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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.