His book is about the:

• power of design to influence
• lack of designers’ involvement within the design process
• absence of ethical considerations within the design process of products and services

It’s essential reading for any designer (or indeed non-designer), and it inspired me to write about a topic that has been on my mind for some time: emotional connection with users, and the point at which creatives stop being cool.

I’m going to keep this blog post specific – it’s a thought piece with some tips and hints on how to avoid commonly held misconceptions, with some practical advice and guidance when it comes to designing experiences.

Make it pretty (and make it work)

In the digital user experience team we are committed to representing the voice of our users through the design of services that meet their needs. Having just been through a big digital transformation programme, we’ve learned how to take a user-centred design approach to our work, because we recognise that by solving users’ problems, we will also be able to meet business objectives.

Many organisations say they value the importance of good design and ‘putting our customers at the heart of all we do’, while their services and systems fail to back up that corporate promise.

On reflection, there is a good reason for this. Generally speaking, digital functions grew out of physical functions such as Marketing, Communications and IT. These were traditionally the ‘go-to’ areas that were commissioned by stakeholders to create stand-alone platforms, creative campaigns and innovative solutions. As a result, so many companies still focus on stand-alone innovations before people. There seems to be a shared mythology that pleasing aesthetics are all that is needed to capture attention, elicit engagement, and smoothly convert another happy customer. But the more difficult question, with more up-front effort, is does it DO what it’s SUPPOSED TO DO in the first place.

Caption: ‘Pretty Vacant’ sign, courtesy of ��

You don’t go to the cinema to listen to the radio

We want people who visit us in an online or offline environment to have a seamless, frictionless experience, with very direct outcomes.

We want them, for example, to:

• feel connected with us
• remember us, even if just for a quick moment
• become our advocate
• tell their friends and family about the outstanding work we do
• carry our message in a crowded and noisy world

So that…

• they buy our goods and use our services,
• we can reduce our support cost and burden
• deliver against strategic outcomes… you get the idea!

We hope that in the longer term, it might even translate into a stronger brand advocacy, loyalty and eventually increased revenues. The ultimate utopia: users’ needs meeting business’ needs.

But emotional connection is about more than just pretty pictures and impressive-sounding vocabulary – it is about meaningful content that helps people achieve something they set out to do. In this scenario, a user walks away from their interaction with us feeling satisfied, and with an innate sense of the great care we took to meet their needs as easily and clearly as possible – now �ٳ�����’s a recipe for brand loyalty.

The way we choose to share this content matters, and certain mediums (or channels) are better than others to get that impact. I’ll be the first to admit that a web page on its own is hardly ever enough.

We need to choose the right tools, or channels, for the right job. Just like we can’t expect people who go to the cinema to listen to the radio: select the best tool available for the task.

Let me explain.

Art vs Design

The basic is to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan.

as something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings.

, she talks about the similarities in the two concepts but also how they are different in their own ways. She says that design is a deliberate practice with intentions to create with a specific purpose and plan. Art is an expression of the artist for decoration, and meant to be interpreted in any number of ways.

Good art is always interpreted, leaving the observer to find the missing pieces dropped on purpose. Whereas, good design should never be open to interpretation; it should be easily understood. In fact, good design when done well is invisible to the user ().

My reflection of that is that in many organisations, ‘design’ is often mistakenly interpreted as indulgent frosting on a functional interface. The problem with this view is that if design and users’ needs are not considered from the start, it’s extremely hard and costly to do something about it later on.

There’s a good reason why many corporate portals or systems don’t function to meet requirements. They have not been designed from end-to-end with both a carefully considered user and outcome in mind. Factoring into your business case two weeks of UX design before the end of a project may meet the requirement of ‘doing some design’, but in reality won’t make the user experience any better!

You cannot fix a cake once it’s been baked. wise words – not mine. Mike says critique should be embraced at every stage of the design process, by the very people who’ll be using your service. That’s how you increase a project’s chances of success. Get feedback early and often to decrease the overall costs of maintenance, repairs and doing big projects time and time again!

The extent to which aesthetics matter

Aesthetics do matter. It is a simple fact that good-looking products and user interfaces are perceived as more valuable and having more positive qualities, even if it’s not true! This is referred to as . Users tend to perceive that things which look better, will work better, even if they are not actually more effective or efficient.

Really good design takes this into account. It makes sure that content is presented to users in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, both as a first impression and also consistently at all stages in the user journey. This elicits a sense of trust in users, and rewards that trust by maintaining it throughout their experience.

But…

Undirected or non-intentional aesthetic design carries its own risks. If this attempt at emotional engagement compromises basic functionality, reliability or usability of an interface, the positive experience you want to promote will mutate into a rant-inducing disaster for our users.

There is no point in presenting an attractive interface that doesn’t help users do what they came to do… or worse, gets in their way.

Caption: Jacques Carelman’s “impossible teapot”. Image credit:

Real examples include social media posts without punctuation, which puts an added burden on people who use screen readers. Or the use of hashtags that don’t use capital letters to help distinguish words. Or the failure to add alt-text to images. Other examples from physical settings, are special signages in buildings or at events that are meant to help clarify how something works or is accessed. Without these signs, a user is left guessing, creating needless frustration.

It shows how design serves as the communication between object and user. We call this the “”: where design elements give you the wrong usability signals to the point that special signage is needed to clarify how they work.

Caption: Your sign says ‘push’ but your handles suggest otherwise. Image credit:

Examples and tips

Tip 1: how do we know what to design?

The answer is – always -your users know. The solution is firmly held by the people we’re designing the product or experience for. This is why we need to understand them better so we know what they need as well as what is aesthetically pleasing for them.

Caption: a OneWeb end of programme sticker: ‘The answer is always: the user knows.’

Your answer is also to start viewing ‘design’ as a series of structured, systematic, intentional decisions. Some of these may not look much like “design” as it is traditionally (and mistakenly) understood (i.e. visual styling). It could be in the form of processes, or structured data, which are some of the layers we have to consider when we design services or interfaces.

For example, text messages from an organisation may not be designed as an official communication channel, therefore causing confusion and preventing users from taking an action resulting in not meeting users and business outcomes. Or say we want to add entry requirements, or related news in multiple areas within a website, rather than creating content multiple times across multiple pages, we can instead structure and manage it in one place, whether we’re publishing it for the first time or the thousandth.

Tip 2: keep things simple

The functionality of products, platforms, and websites must not be undermined. Without it, we are designing our products in the name of art and without a purpose.

Even basics like the photography brief for some new imagery, should always come back to the same principle of fulfilling an intentional purpose: meeting our users’ needs in their own context:

• can I discern the image?
• can I see myself in these spaces?
• are the images authentic?
• am I inspired by your work?

Fundamentally, this is an essential part of creating accessible images and therefore services. You should test what problems these images are there to solve. Your work should be going in front of users, your actual customers, to increase your chances of success and as already mentioned, de-risk issues when you eventually go live.

Caption: K.I.S.S. Keep It Stupid Simple. Simplicity is a lot harder than complex, image credit:

Tip 3: persuasion does not happen at pixel level

As beautifully articulated by Mike Monterio, “a pixel is just a point of proof in the execution”. If we want to design the right way, we are going to have to do it by talking to people. Because designers get hired to solve business problems.

Design isn’t marketing. Both are important but different. Marketing is about persuading users that something is a good idea. Design is about making it self-evident. A product’s usability is often cheaper and easier to address than its persuasiveness, but in order to achieve this with good design, we should not just be feeding in at the beginning or the end of work – good design happens from the start and throughout.

Answering the question of what users want to achieve is done through user research. That is not the same as more traditional market research that has been carried out for years. User research focuses on understanding user needs and how to address them, rather than how to convince them to buy. The emphasis is on observing their behaviour, rather than canvassing their opinion.

As an example, we got insights from user research for some of our study products, which are around building emotional connection. It was all about:

• being able to see the university’s places and spaces, the people (staff and students)
• hearing students tell their stories about their experiences in their own words – all about getting a true insight into their possible future
• being able to feel that this is a good choice for them

This then informed our content strategy in the selection of which content to show. In many cases this is content that hasn’t previously been published, or not published in a way that will meet these needs.��A survey or focus group could have possibly suggested some of these insights, but they wouldn’t have allowed us to find, try out and validate the best ways to execute our design solutions.

Tip 4: solving the problem can’t happen until you understand the problem

That generally means talking to people who are experiencing the problem – not your colleagues, or your friend, or your next door neighbour – unless of course they are among the people who will be marginalised as a result of your product design.

There also had to be a socio-economic lens to the design decision making, similar to those in an article by . Basically any organisation has to consider the impact of change on users, especially the ones who could be excluded by any bad decisions.

Tip 5: not understanding the scope of your work is a problem

Generally speaking, organisations are not very good at articulating business outcomes, and this makes it much harder to understand the scope of the problem you are trying to solve.

Example: “we need more revenue” is not a problem, it is an observation. Because it is not a problem, it also doesn’t have an actual solution, and if you attempt to seek one, you’ll find yourself bogged down in endless speculation that produces few results.

“Our customers drop off during the onboarding experience, which lowers our conversion rate and is leading to lost revenue” is a problem. It is specific, informed and, perhaps most importantly: actionable. Armed with this, a digital user experience can begin the investigation that will eventually lead to a meaningful answer.

A big part of what design is about is to give us a problem to solve with some measurable outcomes that explain what metrics you are looking to move.

Tip 6: not doing research to understand the problem is a problem

Back to the cake metaphor, it’s always a good idea to make sure that the cake is baked with the right ingredients for the right person. And it’s always a good idea to have a good peek behind the curtains to get your assumptions tested. I am forever grateful for challengers who kicked the tyres during usability testing or prototyping. I’d much rather it happened at that point in time, before the team released something that people cannot use. The real value of user research comes from increasing our understanding of who our users are. With every study, every interview, every interaction, our team gets to know our users a little bit better, including the context in which the users work. Then design, test and iterate!

Gathering the right feedback to understand what will drive the connection with users is a gift. “I like it”, or “this looks good ” is not good feedback because it only gives us part of the picture. It doesn’t tell us if someone can use a service, or what frictions they encounter, and does it do what they need it to do. Data and metrics can’t fully answer these questions and they can’t steer you towards the best solutions. This is why we use both qualitative and quantitative research techniques. Data tells you what is happening, qualitative research tells you why and helps you figure out how to solve problems. We talk to people, we get under the surface of what is happening. Good feedback is done through observations in order to identify how to improve a service or a product. Start by outweighing the evidence. Learn what works, learn what doesn’t work ().

Frustration costs

When something is not designed it becomes messy. Not joined up. Annoying. Not user-centric. You make your users work extra hard. In a digital world, extra unnecessary work translates to users going elsewhere to get their needs met.

was developed by the in 2001 as a communicative model for illustrating the variation in companies’ use of design. It suggests that when an organisation adopts design as part of its business strategy, �ٳ�����’s a positive link with higher revenue.

Caption: Design Ladder lists four levels of design.

We’re seeing many companies that understand this link. But the truth is large organisations are orientated around themselves, not the end-user.

As a design team, we’re in a position to help users make decisions, but also for our university. (Jared Spool). It creates frustrations, generates calls, and increases development costs through rework and waste. It also damages the environment (, Gerry McGovern).

We’re therefore in a unique position to research and test where poor design costs our organisation money.

In addition, try to ‘flip’ the perspective and see the choices you want to present from the outside. Avoid flooding with options, but bear in mind the balance between users’ time and comfort zones for handling options for a digital product. Guiding them to select between clear options that will get them somewhere quickly will take the work out of the user experience and reward the user and organisations alike.

Using common design tools and patterns, colour, line, contrast, help people consume information and make decisions more easily. “This is specifically the case for designing forms, or when you convince someone to take an action – the way typeface, colour and layout fit together says a lot about a brand and shapes new users’ perceptions.” (Aaron Walter, ).

Conclusion

Bear in mind that the aesthetic-usability effect has its limits. A pretty design can make users more forgiving of minor usability problems, but not of larger ones.

At the end of the day if:

• the user can’t find the product, the user can’t buy the product.
• the service has multiple interactions that aren’t consistent visually or that haven’t been designed for access, you end up failing those people you were meant to serve in the first place.

Even great-looking sites will have no revenue if they suffer from poor findability. The emotional connection is therefore derived from being able to complete the task efficiently.

From a pragmatic point of view, we need to master the right balance between the design, functionalities, and user experience, planning, thinking ahead, doing deep analysis and being careful and considered in constructing something that will be solid, reusable and stable. Form and function should work together. When interfaces suffer from severe usability issues, or when usability is sacrificed for aesthetics, users tend to lose patience. On the web, people are very quick to leave.

Final notes

There are many important points raised in this article. Many of them are underpinned by good standards and assurance check-points.

If you want to hear more about it, we will be hosting an Ask Me Anything session, and we will be happy to answer your questions then. To find out more first, .

Huge thanks go to Mark, Kate, Jonny and Claire for helping make this blog post better.

Links to articles and further resources:

• (Ayesha Ambreen)
• (NN Group)
• (Don Norman)
• , (Jared Spool)
• (Jared Spool)
• (Mike Monteiro)
• (Danish Design Council, issuu document)
• (Aaron Walter)
• (Smashing Magazine)
• (Jesse Russell Morgan, UX Collective)
• (Ben Holliday)
• (Gerry McGovern)
• (Gareth Ford Williams)

With some colleagues from OneWeb I’ve recently completed a discovery (research) project looking at how well our current website meets the needs of prospective international students. We talked to many international students and many internal stakeholders. We also did a complete usability and analytics review of the current site.

The way we as a university view ‘international’ internally is replicated on our current website. We try to address international user needs through specific, separate pages – the international index and country pages. We forget to present all the rest of our content in a way that answers our international students’ questions and makes them feel like they will belong here. Unintentionally we are creating a sense of exclusion.

International students aren’t (that) different:

We discovered that our international students share all the same user needs and motivations as our UK students, but some of the information needs to be filtered through a ‘relevance lens’ (don’t just tell me about careers in the NHS, tell me what I can do when I go back to my home country). On top of this, international students have a set of informational needs (visas, arrivals, funding etc.) that are unique to them.

Routes to our university as an international student can be more varied and complicated than for our UK students. Even when using an agent or a partner institution, however, international students cite university websites as the most useful resource in their decision making (). Our prospective international students are using our website just as our UK students are, investigating the course first and then exploring life and practicalities.

So, how is OneWeb going to ensure that every piece of content we create speaks to the needs of our prospective international (and EU) students as well as our UK students?

Better content, starting now:

We’re starting right now with the new ‘Life in’ content. This content looks at our cities, our campuses, our halls of residence and our student communities. For every page we’re asking:

• have we answered all the key questions that both UK and international students will have?
• have we represented a broad range of students in our imagery?
• have we shown a range of content that will help people from the UK and overseas feel they will belong here?
• have we written in plain English, without assuming any prior knowledge of idioms or abbreviations?
• have we helped all our users, but particularly those from overseas, picture our city, halls and campuses and understand how those elements connect?

For example, our new ‘student communities’ page now highlights the rich variety of international societies our Students’ Union offers, allows users to explore places of worship near our campuses and highlights the thriving entrepreneurial community we have here. We’re also planning to pull-in stories from our wonderful ‘’ Instagram feed.

Many international students love that the UK has seasons, because they don’t have them at home. When choosing our campus pictures, therefore, we’re looking to reflect this and include beautiful pictures of snow and autumn as well as summer.

Spreading and embedding:

There are many teams within OneWeb working on different sections of content. As soon as we had our findings we ran a ‘’ for the whole team so that everyone is now working to a set of guidelines that ensure international user needs are always considered.

And OneWeb aren’t the only people creating content. It’s important that we share what we’ve learned about our international users with our marketing and communications colleagues so that all our touchpoints are inclusive.

Being international resonates with UK students too:

“68% of young people in the UK believe international experience and a global outlook are essential for their personal goals.”

()

This kind of data tells us that we shouldn’t be afraid to embed our internationalism in all our content, because our UK students also want to gain skills for a global marketplace.

We’re actually adding a new page into the ‘student life’ section of the website that will promote the opportunities we offer all our students, wherever they come from, because we are an international university.

This page, and the community page, have tested really well with prospective students both from the UK and overseas.

A word about language:

As part of our research, I had a brilliant conversation with Dr Jill Doubleday, Senior Teaching Fellow in the University’s Academic Centre for International Students. Jill is passionate about ensuring our teaching is inclusive and works for everybody, no matter where in the world they come from. I was relieved to hear from her that, whilst there are cultural sensitivities to be aware of (particularly in imagery) the key is writing to the principles of plain English, principles that already lie at the heart of the OneWeb project. The advice was to just keep doing what we’re doing.

Data – the final frontier:

Alongside embedding international user needs in all our content, we do have some challenges ahead to meet the specific, practical needs of international students around entry requirement equivalencies, visa information and funding. These issues are ones that OneWeb cannot solve alone; they need a cross-university approach to pull together our data into formats that can feed all our digital content, embedding the data in content wherever it’s most relevant. With the current challenges of COVID-19 that ambition has had to be put on ice, but I’m hopeful that in a future blog I’ll be able to return and share how we have cracked it!

Thanks for reading.

If you’d like to know more about international user needs read our

User research is important

According to user research focuses on:

Understanding behaviours, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.

Content designers put user needs front and centre. We’re 30 years on from the creation of the web and user experience is now a mature field. We can’t therefore underestimate the sophistication of today’s web users. They have:

• little time
• many distractions
• high expectations

An often quoted metric from the confirms how little written content users actually read on the average web page:

On the average web page, users have time to read at most 28% of the words during an average visit; 20% is more likely.

This makes relevance and usefulness a high priority for any organisation. Since finding information is the main activity of a visitor to our website, we need to help them do or find what they need. User research gives us the information to design content that meets their requirements.

Useful content is good for business

If our content isn’t meeting user needs we’re essentially operating in broadcast mode, holding our breath and hoping for the best. That’s bad for the user and bad for business.

So making content useful is mutually beneficial. You’re respecting users by giving them what they need and you’re valuing their time. Plus, you’re meeting the objectives of the business.

The organisation benefits by:

• saving time
• improving productivity
• avoiding rework costs
• enhancing reputation
• generating trust

Really, it is a no-brainer!

We are not our users

Nor are we mind-readers. If we don’t do research we’re making guesses about who is using our site and what their needs are. Thinking hard about what they might need, while commendable, is meaningless. It’s evidence we want. We wouldn’t make assumptions about a piece of academic research before the findings are known, so why do it with our users?

Source:

And we mustn’t forget that our users are human beings – complex, unique and surprising. As Maya says: ‘We don’t know what they don’t know.’ Visually impaired users, for example, have specific requirements which include catering for screen-reading software.

Informing our actions using data is the University’s lifeblood so it makes perfect sense to align this approach with our content development.

Don’t ask users what they think

Short and sweet, but what a user thinks and what a user does are often radically different. It’s a mistake some people make and they’re left scratching their heads when applying their findings changes nothing. This is why observation is an essential technique in the user research toolkit.

More participants isn’t a guarantee of better results

When you’re planning your recruitment brief, recruiting more participants won’t necessarily mean you’ll have a better quality research outcome. Making sure you have a representative sample is more valuable.

Choosing the right timings, location and duration for your research sessions is also crucial – what works well for current engineering postgraduates may not work well for graduate-entry nursing enquirers. Mature students who might be working parents, for example, will have a host of contextual distractions. It’s also important to factor these distractions into the content we create for them.

Representative samples are important to ensure the right people are part of your group
Source: courtesy of Maya Wiseman

Defining research goals and questions are must-do’s

Goals are there to identify, understand and gauge a problem by answering a series of questions such as:

• how are people using this page?
• what do they want from it?
• why aren’t they completing their task?

Good questions are about users rather than services, and they must have an implication for the work. If they don’t, rework or remove them entirely.

It’s fine to mix things up

Apparently using mixed methods is on trend! But it’s true that most projects would benefit from a minimum of several approaches. It’s also wise to carefully consider the most appropriate method for your scenario rather than plumping for techniques you are most familiar with.

For example, using both quantitative and qualitative techniques provides very different but equally valuable and often complementary findings.

Some methods are outlined in this table. Each has its place in helping surface the detail needed to inform content development.

Staying useful is a continual evolution

One constant we can be sure of is change, and in my new role it’s all about embracing it. After all, the habits and behaviours of our web visitors, whether they’re prospective students, members of our local community or potential research partners, do not remain the same.

By putting users at the heart of our process we can ensure our content continually evolves and stays useful.

Proving value

As content designers we recognise that user research is a team sport and can be hugely beneficial to the University. The more we learn about our users and the more we share our knowledge, the more value we can deliver.

As a team, we test and iterate content with users regularly. We want to ensure that they can find it, understand it and act on it. If they struggle, we tweak and refine until it perfectly meets their user needs – or, at least, a bit more perfectly than it did before.

Moving forward, we want to shout more loudly about our successes. We want to be tracking metrics that matter and prove the value of user-centred content to the University. We want to share what we’ve learnt about our users and ensure that those findings inform every part of the University’s communications.

If we don’t meet user needs, we can’t expect to meet business needs.

A big thank you to Maya and everyone who contributed to this post. Some further user research reading (courtesy of Maya):

A bit about me

Hi there!

I’m Sarah, a recent graduate of the Games Design and Art programme at Winchester School of Art (WSA). I spent 2 years on the Graphic Arts programme before transferring to Games Design, where I applied a further user-centred approach to my design work. My interest in user experience design stemmed from a short-term project with a London-based product design studio during my degree; where I discovered the lean UX process and found that this could also be applied to games. This led to my research focus for my , addressing the need of bridging tactile games and technology.

I discovered the OneWeb programme through the Digital Team blog, exploring the recent work with the undergraduate and postgraduate course pages. I was really interested to see a user-focused approach within the University’s marketing and expressed interest in getting involved. This has seen me join the team as a UX design intern and getting stuck into the live project.

What has been good

My internship so far has involved me working within the Student Experience Team researching and designing around the ‘what it is like to live in…’ pages. The team have been extremely welcoming and are well experienced, it has been a pleasure to be able to get involved with their work.

Image: our student experience team ‘in-action’

This has seen me experiencing agile development through processes such as sprint planning, daily stand-ups and retrospectives. I’ve found these to be really helpful with organising and communicating with the team and ultimately reflect often about my completed work and how to adapt my working practices in further sprints.

Recently I’ve been able to interact with current students through a series of design workshops, to gain a better understanding of their retrospective needs and desires for the website. I was able to take part in one of the sessions as a participant and then later as a moderator in another session. This challenged me to continually encourage students to dive deep into their experiences and feelings, thinking about open-ended questions to establish these conversations.

Image: some design wireframes created by students��

I have also taken part in a make-and-do workshop with the team, which gave me opportunities to communicate ideas and approaches that can support both prospective students and business needs to the rest of the team. As an alumna from Winchester School of Art, I have been able to fill knowledge gaps about the Winchester student experience, demonstrating its differing culture. This has been useful in how we address the separate campuses within the living pages.

From these research and make-and-do sessions I have started to explore my core role as a UX designer on the team, by creating ideas for map assets that can be utilised across the living pages. These designs will give a sense of a visual picture for prospective students with potential to point out current student experiences at icon pinpoints. This has also made me explore a filtration system from ideas such as category selection to search based terms. By carrying out this task I am understanding better how to communicate key interactions and how they will interact with new and existing content.

What has been difficult?

While taking part in both the student and team-based workshops there have been many opportunities to feedback ideas to conclude the sessions. These have been imperative to our development of sprints and, whilst contributing, I’ve found these daunting, giving an overview and not delving deep into the ‘whys’ of each decision. This is something I hope to practice more through further team workshops as well as meetings, which I have confidence in due to the friendly nature of the team.

What would I like to do more of?

I’m looking forward to exploring more component design, such as the maps component that will be used across living pages. I’m finding the interactive design elements to be challenging and want to find further solutions to satisfy user stories. From this I also hope to become involved with prototyping to get a sense of how these components work within the architecture, multiple page levels and visual design. I would also like to continue the collaborative design work we do as a team to establish key goals and approaches of components, as they have greatly aided my individual design work with the maps component.

How can people get involved?

The OneWeb blog has been a great tool for me to understand the different sections of the programme and I highly recommend checking out the posts to understand the team’s ongoing developments. There are lots of opportunities to contribute to the OneWeb team whether that be through usability testing, workshops, Show and Tells or joining our team. There are regular jobs and internships posted through the University, which are great opportunities to apply for and become part of this creative, user-centred team.

As part of the programme, we are constantly considering how we get more students involved with our teams. If you would like to get involved, please get in touch.

My name is Daniel. I am originally from Hungary but have lived in 6 countries over the years. I have just completed my degree in psychology at the University of Southampton.

I can’t believe my time studying at Southampton has come to an end but I’m very excited that I got this opportunity to be a part of the OneWeb programme.

This is me graduating in the summer.��

I took on the role of User Research Intern with two other Psychology students, Sara and Mathilde, and we’ve all been working on different aspects of the programme.

We first encountered the Interns position via the job board of the University’s Career Services. Soon after, we were interviewed and offered the vacancies, which was great! I was always interested in exploring human-centred design and user experience (UX), so joining this programme as part of the user research and service design team has been an amazing experience.

It’s a collaborative effort

Throughout my internship, I learned how important it is to plan out and set our goals – from creating full experience-based journeys to doing a team stand-up. And being part of this programme has been a lot of fun. The work is varied with new challenges popping up all the time, so no day is the same.

We have been doing a lot of user testing – identifying needs and testing prototypes. I have also been asked to carry out competitor analysis and a literature review. The team is very keen on getting me involved and hearing my ideas – it feels great to be contributing! We are also working with some great tools to research, interview people, and keep track of what we’re doing to finish projects in a timely manner.

Before joining the programme, I didn’t realise just how many things happen behind the scenes that people don’t realise – prototyping, for example. The prototyping process can be long and it goes through stages of iterations and testing – from conceptual stages to high fidelity prototypes. Taking part in a live user test is important. It helps you understand how users actually interact with the product and to see whether your design decisions translate into the expected user behaviour. More importantly, it involves a huge amount of team effort and collaboration to come up with innovative solutions that work and solve problems.

Work as a team. User research is a team sport. Credit:

I feel very lucky because I have this opportunity to gain experience in so many different aspects of UX – from research to design. In addition, the people I get to work with are wonderful. Everyone is super friendly and supportive, so it’s a pleasure to be part of the team. I have an interest in UX as a career, and the people I work with encourage me to explore and experience everything that is involved in this field.

What has been difficult?

I recently did my first user test. After observing a few test sessions, I was asked if I’d like to give one a go myself. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity so naturally I said yes.

It was a bit daunting to run my own session after seeing only a few, but everyone was really supportive and I felt up for the challenge.

The session ended up being really great and we were able to get some valuable feedback on a prototype that one of the teams worked on. It was definitely a challenge but I can’t wait to do more.

What would I like to do more of?

I would like to try more things I haven’t done before. It would be great to get more insight into the design aspects of the project. Apart from this, I love collaboration and brainstorming, so I can’t wait for more sessions where we just sit down and try to figure something out – be it generating themes from a series of user tests or discussing how our findings can be implemented.

What else…

If you get an opportunity to be part of this project, whether in testing, internship or workshops, definitely apply and make the most of it! There are so many opportunities on the University’s career site that you otherwise wouldn’t have access to. There is no better way to learn than throwing yourself in new situations and experiences! (just) Do it!

Getting involved with OneWeb

As part of the programme, we are now considering how we get more students involved with our team. If you would like to get involved, please get in touch.

For readers who might be unaware, during a the team seeks to find out:

• who the users of the potential digital service are,��
• what problems they have, and��
• what can be done to improve the experience for them.��

Clearly “Research” is a huge topic that touches many parts of our university, so in order to make the ������Ƭy more manageable we split it into two key areas, Research Excellence Framework (REF) and Research Content.����

We reported our REF findings in after speaking to many researchers and staff from the various professional services at the University.��

We came up with two hypotheses:

• how to improve Impact Case Studies with a significant Public Engagement element for REF2021
• changes to the identification, creation and reporting on Impact throughout the lifecycle of a research project

In this post we will focus on our work into Research Content, which at the time of writing is still ongoing, but nearly complete.��

The problem we are trying to solve��

So, what do we mean by Research Content? Simply, any online content that contains references to, or is part of, some research being undertaken at the University.��

Our University harbours impactful, highly evaluated and newsworthy research. Yet students, faculty and staff, and members of the public are often unaware of research content that may interest or benefit them.��

OneWeb is exploring ways to expose and communicate academic research at the University effectively and in a way that serves its diverse users – the people who produce, fund, communicate, evaluate, and apply this research.��

Why this is important��

The value of research in the Higher Education sector cannot be understated. The UK is a world leader and research accounts for over £1 billion of overseas investment (source: Universities UK).��

Our University is a research-intensive university, and a significant revenue derives directly from research. Research is also vital to maintain the reputational value the university gains from the cutting edge researchers working here.��

What we did

We initially approached the School of Geography and Environmental Sciences (SoGES) to understand how they organise their content, both from a school and research project perspective.��

We then attended the SoGES away day where we gave a presentation about the importance of taking a user-led and consistent approach to creating our digital content. We spoke to many researchers and watched some early-career researchers explain their current research.����

During the past few weeks we’ve been carrying out an intensive period of user research sessions where we interviewed over 30 people including students, researchers, external funders, content creators, and colleagues in professional services. This helps us to start drawing out a picture, supported with evidence, of their needs and the context they’re in when they look for research-related content.

We also carried out competitor analysis work to understand how our research stacks up against other HE institutions and search engine optimisation (SEO) analysis to identify what people are searching for when they arrive on our research pages. We also looked at the internal systems we use to deliver content to users.��

What we learned��

As we mentioned above, we’re still in the process of synthesising our results. We’re looking as widely as possible for evidence and will compare what we think we know more widely, but there are a few common themes that are already surfacing across the work:

Researchers and research-focussed students are already creating some compelling useful content, but they’re not necessarily looking at it in a holistic way. We know it competes for users’ attention with other content created by other University colleagues.��

People matter – people search for names (of our researchers, or research groups and projects). It is about individuals and there is a careful balance that needs to be struck with brand reputation of the University as a whole. This is also consistent with the rest of the sector.��

Surfacing relevant content at the right place and time for those who need it is difficult. The burden remains largely on the user to find what they’re looking for. Many systems and processes in place are making it too difficult to re-use research content across the University digital estate.��

What’s next��

We’re forming a plan to make meaningful change for users in this area, but our direction of travel is one that involves recommending changes in a number of areas including policy, infrastructure and content delivery.��

Thank you

We’d like to thank our great collaborators from across the whole of the University, who gave us their time so freely and at short notice.

We enjoyed meeting you, hearing from you and listening to your individual stories. This has helped us shape the next steps and recommendations. We’re also looking to talk to more of you. More to follow soon.��

Finally, this article would not have been possible without Andrew Larcombe’s words about the team’s work and approach

What is a design sprint?

In a nutshell: design sprints help solve big problems in a short period of time by exploring and discussing ideas. They help generate a strong, effective solution to a problem. In this particular case it was around undergraduate course pages.

Ironically, design sprint is not just about the design. The challenge may actually be more about the functionality or the content than the design. The process for design sprint is a very structured design thinking process, and it translates business objectives into actionable insights in just a few days.

Sounds great, right? But in reality what does it mean?

You can’t fight silos with silos

“We tend to get caught up in busy work — attending meetings, shipping one feature at a time; eventually losing sight of our north star.” –

Most organisations know what their biggest challenges are. Although, it can be tricky to reach a shared understanding of a problem, and even harder to get to a solution. This is especially true when you operate in a large organisation like our university, where responsibility and accountability to a business problem might be scattered amongst individuals, departments and directorates.

An example of organisational silos��

So, how do you align siloed teams to come up with a plan? You got it – enter Design Sprints.

We ran a design sprint

We were lucky enough that Winchester School of Art’s (WSA) campus opened their doors to us, and we assembled a small team of digital ‘experts’ from disciplines of User Experience (UX), tech development, content strategy and design, user research and product. We also invited Alastair and Adam, our academic colleagues who have deep interest in human centred design and Andreea, a 2nd year Game Art and Design student to be part of our team to add extra knowledge, expertise and represent the student voice.

It was intense few days. For me, it was great to see the power of bringing a group of experts to one room for 4-days and solve a problem or answer a question. It was great to see how , one of our Service Designers, facilitated everyone through a process that helped align the team around what we were looking to solve.

By the end of the sprint, the team have come up with a potential solution, sketched it, built it  –  and what’s best, they have tested it with real users.

Source: ��

Alan and I thought to share with you a summary of some of the highlights from the process, including some great little clips we took to allow you peek into what we’ve learned and what we would do differently next time. Here we go:

Day 0 – 8 May

Unlike typical sprints, we actually started the process a week before by challenging the current university’s brand proposition. We didn’t want to discard the current work done on the Undergraduate campaign and brand work, but we felt it is important to understand who we’re designing for and how we can build on it in order to create a superior experience online. The outcome of this workshop with senior managers and executives was to set out the brief for the design sprint the following week.

Day 1 – 13 May

Coming into Day 2, most of us didn’t know what to expect. Although the majority of us have participated in design sprints previously, we’ve never worked together in this way. This is because many of our OneWeb team members are new to the university, and because we are not co-located, so haven’t had the pleasure working with each other in this way.

The day was spent sharing information, assessing the opportunities and aligning the team around a common goal. We heard about 8 May workshop, I set the context to OneWeb and the university’s vision, Nick talked about user research. We had data and insights from previous work and we agreed on the design sprint objective and questions we’re looking to answer.

The latter part of the day was starting to sketch ideas individually so we can talk about it the following day. This part was very hard, especially to those of us who are very familiar with the sector and our website. We also had time constraints and had to come up with something within 40 minutes. It’s amazing what time boxing can do to push everyone to the next level!

Some of the many sketches from the day

������’s on his first day.

Day 2 – 14 May

After spending day 1 sketching and ideating, we spent the morning talking through each idea. Alan did a great job presenting each idea. We also walked around the rooms and halls and voted for the ideas that we liked the best.

Alan in action: presenting our ideas

The final casting vote was with me, as the Product Owner for the user experience. It was really hard because there were so many worthy ideas. But the decision was made and the next step was to storyboard what we’ve agreed on in more detail. That’s where we got to at the end of the day.

��Adam did sharing his thoughts of day 2.

Day 3 – 15 May

Prototyping day. We agreed roles and responsibilities in the morning and Alan reminded us all of what we’re here to do. So, with lots to do, the team worked on the prototype, splitting up the tasks and using Invision to create something we can test with our users. It was a long day, not without its challenges.

Day 4 – 16 May

Testing day. When all your hard efforts make sense. A very exciting day for the team to hear first hand what our end users really think of the prototype. Nick, our User Researcher, conducted 6 interviews.

We had issues with some no-shows, but thanks to our lovely student, Andreea, we were quick to fill in any gaps. We also used this opportunity to test it with some Postgraduate students to check what elements are common patterns to both user types.

The outcome

We felt that we were much better informed about our solution, and we’re clear about the next steps we need to to take. We had some first sketch of design principles and ways of working, which we will write up properly and communicate with you all.

We also managed to answer all our sprint questions and feedback from users brought up some additional elements that we need to take into account. The bottom line – we know what we need to do in order to make our course pages better. All of it, in just a few days.

Lessons learned

As with everything, we know there are things we should change, and areas that didn’t quite work for us.

• We had some users’ feedback on areas that we still need to consider.
• There is always a temptation to bite on more than you can chew.
• Too many user interviews, but some didn’t show up.
• We’re thinking that it would be useful to have some contingencies planned in this area.
• We all have biases and also too many great ideas!
• As a group, we like talking! Definitely less talking, more doing.

What’s next

In just a few days the team had outlined a goal, defined and validated a concept and knew what it would take to achieve that Vision to help us deliver for 31 July and beyond. We created alignment around the problem and validated solutions with real users and got actionable feedback. Design sprints can save the university a lot of money in the long run.

As part of the OneWeb programme, we are now considering how we built it into regular chucks of work and get more of YOU to be involved in this process. So, with our news and show and tells. More on this soon.

So… what does a user researcher do?

Our OneWeb user researchers fulfil several roles for our teams. They are here to help our teams understand:

• who the users of our services are and what they need from the service. This is because if we’re to build great services, we need to truly empathise with our users.
• what’s the problem the user is trying to solve, what goal are they trying to achieve? How can we support them to achieve their goal?
• whether the solution we’re looking to provide works well and how it can be better

User research is invaluable and it helps decide:

• if we should build/release something at all,
• what that something should be and
• how it should work.

The user has the final say

We’ve stopped thinking we know everything. Instead of assuming we’re always right, we’ve adopted an approach where our decisions are increasingly based on insights. We’re listening to our users more than ever and they inform the direction in which we move.

What the users really get to see. From .

User research shows us how the things we create will fit into users lives. It also gives us insight into the language people use and how they view the world. It helps us understand the problems in their lives they’re trying to solve, the goals they’re trying to achieve, and how our creations can help solve those problems or complete their tasks.

There is also the question of what we’re testing when we do research: we’re testing our designs, we are not testing our users. The user doesn’t pass or fail, the design does.

This is really important when we come to think about the products we’re creating and the language we use.

And this brings me nicely to the user testing we carried out last week.

Undergraduate usability testing

The first part of our delivery is elements of the mammoth user journey: ‘Become an Undergraduate Student’. Nick, our Lead User Researcher, and the team dug deeper to help us understand how prospective undergraduates:

• go about shortlisting universities and courses
• use the University’s website to find course information
• use course page content to compare courses and inform their decision to (or not to) apply
• feel about the new Minimum Viable Product (MVP) course page design that the OneWeb team have developed.

This is the first version of a new course page template designed by the OneWeb team. It’s a white-label prototype.

Here are 5 things that we learned from the tests:

The user journey is complex

The user journey refers to the sequence of events and steps that a prospective undergraduate student will take in deciding where to apply to go to university. This includes the process of picking a course, researching and shortlisting potential universities, and making a final selection to include in a UCAS application.

Although there was some consistency in how users approached this task, the research suggests that the user journey is complex and non-linear, with many start and end points, such as the many third-party resources that help prospective students to select courses.

Course pages need to help users to complete specific tasks

Prospective students described their need to make quick comparisons with other courses on their shortlist. We can help them to do this by providing easier access to basic comparison information (such as entry requirements, fees etc), a good course overview and concise and engaging information about specific course modules.

Secondary requirements includes practical information about the campus, internships, scholarships, access to teaching staff.

MVP design – are we on the right track?

Yes we are! All of the users we spoke to preferred the MVP course page design to the existing website. They liked that it was clean and uncluttered, allowing them easy access to the most important bits of the information they needed to compare courses. They particularly liked the bold summary in the page header, and found the other headings easy to understand and navigate.

The presentation of course module information was the subject of much discussion. Without a shadow of a doubt, we have an important design challenge in finding the appropriate amount of detail for course modules, as well as the most enticing way to describe them.

General navigation problems

We have always known that the existing site has issues around navigation and how users find the information they need. There are many reasons for it, primarily due to legacy issues, vast amounts of content, and problems with search engine optimisation.

As expected, the tests also helped to identify other more general usability issues with the existing website. For example, several participants had problems navigating around the site and finding appropriate course information. Others found that, once they had chosen to explore other areas of the site, they struggled to find their way back to information they were originally interested in.

Clear navigation is an important part of the usability of a website and how effective it is in helping users to achieve their goals. Further research is planned over the coming weeks to help us improve navigation around the website.

What about international students?

The international students we spoke to had a slightly different, global perspective on deciding where to go to university.

As with domestic students, entry requirements are key. They describe international entry requirements as being more complex and having to do more research to understand what is required of them.

The starting point of the journey is different. Often international students will be considering multiple countries to study in as well as different institutions. They use global resources and rankings to help them narrow their searches and decide on where to apply.

Our international participants were particularly positive about efforts made by universities to help them to understand what life on campus might be like, and the support available, when distances prohibit an open day visit.

They describe some universities as being particularly good at helping to overcome the distance by providing:

• virtual tours
• regular video and social media contact with staff and faculty
• access to student union facilities
• contact with other international students at the organisation, particularly those studying in similar areas

One participant described the resulting ‘connectedness’ as a key factor in selecting her firm choice of university.

So what’s next?

This is a really exciting time. The direction we’re moving in is becoming inevitably more digital and evidence-based in order to be as user-centric as we can. We’re facing many challenges and a good amount of user research will enable us to take the OneWeb programme from strength to strength.

This was the first part of our degree course pages iteration. We will continue testing and iterating our product by getting live feedback from our users on a frequent basis.

If you would like to attend one of our forthcoming show and tells, . Thank you for reading!

Our Alpha is coming to an end next week. It is still possible to review the work we have undertaken so far on our blog��and we would love to hear your feedback.

As part of our end-of-phase work, we are currently crunching some data from our user research and putting together the information for our Show and Tell.

We are very excited for our Show and Tell next week, where we’ll be sharing everything we’ve learned. We’ll keep our cards close to our chests until then – don’t want to spoil the big reveal! There’s only a few places left, so get yours .

What we’ve done

This has been a week of research, analysis and prep for our presentation.

Launch control

Sue from our Web Content team launched the remote study in our testing platform, UserZoom, after solving several technical complications between vendors. We had an anxious wait before we started collecting responses from year 12 students recruited by YouthSite. When we had collected enough responses, Rosie from Institutional Research (IR) used the study data to create an analysis of the results so far. We will be sharing these insights at the Show and Tell.

Launch control, we are go!
Photo by����on��

The remote study is still collecting responses: at time of writing our quota is 80% full. Once it’s at 100%, Rosie and Needee from Institutional Research (IR) will be doing a full analysis and we’ll use this to inform the next steps – the learning and doing doesn’t stop with the end of Alpha.

Presenting the whole picture

In preparation for the Show and Tell, I have summarised the archive of user research that we’ve done in the build up to Alpha. We’re using this user research, alongside the other aspects of what it takes to maintain course pages, to show the full picture of how course content can be improved. The other factors include:

• governance across the University
• how each of the teams worked together in Alpha
• how content, design and development work together
• how content is designed
• workflow for stakeholders

Ayala and Padma are now preparing their slide deck for the presentation and practising their delivery. Oh… and making sure the catering is delivered on time.

Courses past, present and future

Padma has also been working with Katrina, Jon and Linden on the challenge of showing multiple years of course information to students – past, present and future.

It’s your course pages, Marty. Something’s gotta be done about your course pages!
Courtesy Everett Collection via

What we’ve learnt

We’ve learnt a lot this week while going through all the data sources and reviewing the experiences in the team. We’ll tell you all about it at the Show and Tell.

What we’re doing next

Show and tell

Our for the University community will take place on Tuesday 3 July at Highfield Campus. Places are limited, and available on a first come, first served basis .

Don’t worry if you cannot make it; we will record the presentation and share our deck with you.

Washing up

Kitty, Needee, Rosie, Ayala, Sue, Padma and I will discuss the research needs left over from Alpha, and check what additional information we can extract from the pilot’s data. We’ll be using this to take stock of where we are and make sure we stay aligned to our True North,��as we move on to the next stage.

Maybe looking to come to an open day?

Or perhaps getting to do something you’ve always dreamt about?

Exploring new skills? ������Ƭing your independence?

Which university course page do you remember looking at?

Whatever our prospective students are after, they’ll almost certainly start with course pages, on their phone or a website like ours, or both.

What we’ve done

Card sort testing

We visited a local college and conducted a few exercises with our target audience – high quality prospective students who are interested in going to university in the next three years.

The main objectives for the test were:

• To understand how our users expect our top-level user needs-based content to be organised
• To understand users’ expectations of where course pages would be found
• To find out what ‘natural’ language our users attribute to our content topics and categories of topics

During the test, we asked them questions about what they look for on a course page, and to do a task to sort different course information into categories.

From the Post-it tasks it was clear that the most important criteria were:

• Entry requirements
• Student satisfaction – students’ ratings of teaching (NSS) were very important in the sense that they would like to know what current students think of the university/course
• Course content – details of modules, not just names. In particular, which are optional and which are a compulsory part of the course
• Career opportunities and companies that hired graduates from the course, as well as desired careers and ideas for potential career paths
• Contact details for someone involved in that course, not just generic university contact details
• Similar courses – if they can’t get in, what other options are open to them

Post-it task with our users

Getting our remote tests ready

Sue and Chris have been very busy building remote tests in our platform, UserZoom. The questionnaire was written by Institutional Research (IR) to help us speed things up.��There is a lot to do and we have recruited participants via YouthSite. This build wasn’t without its challenges, but we got there eventually.

A snippet from our online survey in UzerZoom��

Build and development

HEFCE AND RAD designs

Our developer, Jon, has been working (literally) round the clock to complete the build and design of all seven sample pages in the HEFCE and Radical design. This was very labour-intensive work, but he did it! Helped by Linden, they’ve managed to turn around 14 course templates as well as ancillary pages such as accommodation, book for an open day and more!

Getting the alpha site ready for testing

They were also busy getting the alpha site ready for deployment, so Sue and Chris can get it tested by our remote participants. This will enable us to test some of the user journey and see what alterations we need to make.

What we’ve learnt / challenges

A few observations and learning points from this week:

• From a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) point of view, we would like to have more time to conduct keyword analysis and competitor benchmarking, so we can help inform the content from a user perspective and advise if the course names, for example, resonate with our audiences. This is something that we can take to the next phase.
• We need more time for card sort tests and we will ensure that we take it into account in future planning
• Our governance workflow needs adjusting. We mentioned that marketing needs to be involved in the content production workflow and that we will amend it based on the outcome of the experiment. If we have more time, a marketing expert for the relevant faculty should review these as well
• It brings up the question once again about the ownership of the course pages and who this content is written for
• We need an operational content strategy. In the SPOCs and Fact-Checkers workshops (many moons ago), some stakeholders raised the very valid point that they’re having to fact-check and approve content for myriad channels. We can all agree that this is an inefficient use of their time. How content is created, how it is approved and governed has implications. Our old approaches to content production are no longer fit for purpose. This is no longer just about approving a webpage, because there is a broader user journey to take into account and these content pieces could and should be repurposed in multiple contexts. It is about who, what and��how it will be consumed. This is tricky, but can bring a lot of rewards to the University… if we master it.

What’s next

Next is testing! And crunching data.

Huge thanks again to Needee, Rosie and Kitty from IR for helping us to turn around the analysis quickly. We’re very grateful for the support. I would also like to mention our project team. Everyone worked and is still working really, really hard to ensure that we get the most out of our experiment and bring value to the University.

We’re very keen to share the results with you in our ��on 3 July. Bookings are first come, first served, and with only a few places left we will be closing it soon. Don’t worry if you cannot make it; we will record the presentation and share our deck with you.

Parting words for this week

Nothing like finishing with a good metaphor:

“If a business was an ocean explorer, then content strategy would be the compass. You can have the best boat, a killer crew and a meticulous map. But without a compass, you won’t know if you’re sailing in the right direction.��

True North on the content strategy compass is a single, shared goal: to create experiences our users love by delivering the right information, to the right user, at the right time. Makes sense, right?!” –��

“There’s content in them thar hills.”
Source:����on��

Thank you for reading.