In late April we had the opportunity to attend the 24th annual Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference, affectionately known as #durbbu, hosted in historic Durham. This year’s theme, Little Things that Make a Big Difference, was a pleasant shif…
Blog Posts
How the Effective Digital Content course led to a collaborative project to explore ways to improve the School of Informatics course materials site
In January 2026, Alex Burford, a learning technologist from the School of Informatics contacted the UX Service following completion of the new Effective Digital Content online course. Alex had really enjoyed the course and was keen to explore ways to implement the content design best practice principles it teaches within Open Course – the platform […]
Finding efficiencies through process diagnosis: Refining the Effective Digital Content coursework marking and feedback protocol
As we approach the first anniversary of the launch of the new Effective Digital Content course it was timely to review our approach to marking the content design exercises completed by learners to look for ways to simplify and potentially automate aspects of the process. In May 2025 the UX Service launched a new version […]
Think like a machine: How building a Drupal context-handling feature is providing a new lens on content design and style rules
AI tools to support content tasks are becoming more and more widespread. As part of my contributions to open-source Drupal I’ve been researching how to prepare and package content design and style rules that these tools can use effectively. Using AI to help with content design tasks (and indeed, any other type of tasks) is […]
You don’t know what you don’t know: Improving the way we position inclusive language at the University
Progressive thinking about inclusive content combined with a review of our content design tools prompted us to look at the effectiveness of our Inclusive Language Guide. Before we could think about improving the guide, however, we needed to ensure staff knew it existed. Since the relaunch of our Effective Digital Content course last year, and […]
A New Chapter: Our Move to Forrest Hill’s Studio
When we first heard about the relocation plans to Forrest Hill, we were cautiously optimistic. Knowing there was a studio there, and given that our studio at Argyle House was modelled after Forrest Hill’s, it suggested that moving to an already familia…
Fifth year of “Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” – the Edinburgh Award
We know that many students are involved in activities alongside their studies such as volunteering, part-time work, and getting involved in the University community. To help these activities to stand out from the crowd, our University has had an Award for “Digital Volunteering with Wikipedia” to sit beside other available Edinburgh Awards for the last […]
Being crafty with hand-drawn stick figures and open-sourced music
Changing the visual design mid-way in a video project is quite unusual, but pivoting to a softer animation style with stick figures proved successful for both the client and us.
Being crafty with hand-drawn stick figures and open-sourced music
Reading Time: 4 minutesChanging the visual design mid-way in a video project is quite unusual, but pivoting to a softer animation style with stick figures proved successful for both the client and us.
What’s a couple of decades between friends?
After almost 22 years working in a variety of different roles at the University, I’ve made the decision to leave. It’s been a hard decision as there is so much I love about my job but I need a chance to catch up with myself. I’d like to have a …
Sharing ABC Learning Design approaches worldwide
It’s been a year since Instructional Designer Andrea Watkins Pérez at UiT The Arctic University of Norway reached out to me after she came across my University profile. Their Learning Design team was facing some challenges with running ABC Learni…
PHPUK 2026
This February I was back at the PHPUK conference in London. The venue this year was 1 America Square with a historic wall through the middle of one of the rooms. There were three tracks to follow so unfortunately we couldn’t go to all the talks, but managed to cover two thirds. It Depends – […]
Site Search in an AI-First Web
A question has been doing the rounds recently: do we actually need site search? It’s a fair question and one I have been giving a lot of thought to. With AI-powered summaries increasingly answering queries before users even reach a website, and with navigation that, when it works, can get people where they need to […]
Three things I’ve learned about UX leadership in the last three-and-a-bit years: Reflections from an award-winner
Last month I was honoured to receive a national award for Outstanding Leadership from industry body UCISA, recognising my work driving positive change through UX. This achievement prompted me to reflect on my experiences leading UX in different realms over the past few years, and to think about what UX leadership means to me. At […]
Using links and headings to make your content more accessible: What we covered in March’s Content Improvement Club
Content Improvement Club is our regular meetup for web publishers. In our March session, with a focus on accessibility, we explored how effective use of links and headings can make content easier to navigate and use. Accessible content is effective content Accessible content is simply effective content. If people cannot access, understand or use […]
Preserving People, Not Just Paper: My Internship Conserving the New College Collection
Today’s blog comes from Katherine Richey, an Edinburgh student who undertook a five-month internship with Heritage Collections from March to …Continue reading →
Reflections on IDCC 2026
In February, Robin Rice and I ventured to Zagreb, Croatia, for the 20th International Digital Curation Conference. This year’s theme …Continue reading →
It depends!
I had the pleasure of attending the PHP UK Conference in London this year. It was my second time, and it was even more exciting than the last! We had three simultaneous sessions, with 19 carefully chosen speakers and a new venue to welcome over 200 attendees. We got to connect with experienced developers, newcomers […]
My Wikimedia journey so far
“I started my internship as an Assistant Wikimedian in Residence almost four months ago, and it has already been one of the most rewarding work experiences I have had.”
300 Faces
I was recently invited to the ‘300 Faces of Edinburgh Medical School’ launch event. Marking the 300th anniversary of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, this exhibition c…
Same Image, Different Story: Why AI Needs the Right Architecture to Fix Accessibility
After Stratos’s blog post last week, I revisited Joshua Mitchell’s experiment asking an AI to simulate what using a screen reader actually feels like, not to replace proper testing, but to generate a transcript of the experience that could be shared with stakeholders who had never encountered one. The results were striking: skip links that […]
From recommendations to reality: Applying UX design thinking for a technical solution for staff profiles
The Role of Profiles project produced 10 recommendations for an improved University profile provision. To start actioning these, I assembled a working group of specialists and drew on UX design principles – implementing practical prioritisation while seeking innovative solutions that addressed the research findings. Recognising the widespread value and strategic importance of communicating the work, […]
The next industrial revolution? Reflections from Jisc Digifest 2026
From the birthplace of the original Industrial Revolution, a group of around 2000 intrepid EdTech practitioners and enthusiasts sought to examine and understand what has been dubbed the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution.’ I was fortunate to be among them for Jisc Digifest 2026 in Birmingham this week. There were many opportunities to contribute and get creative […]
Repositioning Effective Digital Content as a short online course: A product approach
Following a successful launch of Effective Digital Content, our internal course that staff complete to learn and practice fundamental content design skills, the UX Service saw an opportunity to make the course more widely available, on the University’s Short Courses platform. In May 2025, after months of user research-informed development work, my UX Service team […]
AI and accessibility: keeping the human in the middle
There is an expression that is used more and more when referencing use of AI, and makes me uncomfortable: “Keeping the human in the loop”. I, instead, believe we need to ensure that we “Keep the human in the middle”. What is more relevant with this then, other than reflecting on the impact, negative but […]
Five quick wins to improve your content: What we covered at February’s Content Improvement Club
In our February session of Content Improvement Club, publishers from across the University met up and worked together on pages from their sites. In this session, we focused on five simple things that we can all do when checking over our content. About the session Content Improvement Club is our monthly meet-up for web publishers. […]
DrupalCamp England 2026: Augmented Intelligence, Uncomfortable Truths, and the Joy of Community
On the last weekend of February, I made the trip to Salford for DrupalCamp England 2026. It is only its second year, but already an event I have found myself looking forward to returning to. I came away with a notebook full of ideas, some genuine food for thought about the direction of AI, and […]
DrupalCamp England 2026: Augmented Intelligence, Uncomfortable Truths, and the Joy of Community
On the last weekend of February, I made the trip to Salford for DrupalCamp England 2026. It is only its second year, but already an event I have found myself looking forward to returning to. I came away with a notebook full of ideas, some genuine food for thought about the direction of AI, and […]
Finding My Feet with AI and Finding ELM
Six months ago I joined the Web Development team at the University of Edinburgh. I know Drupal well, but I also know it’s like a huge bag of Lego bricks, its power lies in how those bricks have been assembled, and every codebase assembles them differently. Testament to those who came before me, EdWeb 2 […]
Digital Accessibility Intern
If you are interested in helping users and people, we have an interesting summer internship for you which is about checking our services to make sure they are as accessible as they can be for all our users.
Revisiting alt text for January’s Content Improvement Club
Content Improvement Club is our regular meetup for web publishers. In January, we ran two sessions focused on writing alt text and making images accessible. Last March, we ran a session outlining why alt text matters and key principles behind writing it well. This post builds on that session, so we recommend reading our previous […]
Drupal Camp Scotland 2025: A Day of Connections
Back in November (yes, I know — this post is fashionably late), I attended Drupal Camp Scotland on 7th November 2025. It was a full day of interesting, insightful and genuinely useful talks. From the moment I arrived, greeted by friendly faces over morning coffee – there was a strong sense of community. As my […]
How can people trust AI-generated content? Designing provenance data into our prototype AI searchbot
As AI-generated content becomes increasingly prevalent, questions of trust emerge, prompting a growing need for transparency about the creation of digital content. As part of an academic study, I designed and prototyped ways to display provenance data for synthetic content made by an AI searchbot on a University website. Working in UX, I’m always eager […]
Get Involved with Open Education Week
The #openscot blog has been dark for a while. Not because there are not a lot of initiatives happening across Scotland. Open Education Week presents a great opportunity for institutions and practitioners across Scotland to shine a light on our open practice. Perhaps an opportunity for you and or your organisation to learn about open […]
Edinburgh Innovations Case Study: Redesigning the Inventions and Intellectual Property Pages
Hello! I am Dono, a fourth-year Government, Policy, and Society student. In my role as Green Digital Design Intern on the UX team, I work on projects that integrate user-centred design and sustainable digital practices, with the goal of helping the University meet its net-zero targets by 2040. In November, I took over from the […]
Resources we’re using to support our work on the editorial style guide
In this post, Digital Content Style Guide Intern Hannah Watson examines the research and existing guidance that have supported our work on the University’s style guide. The UX team have recently been working to refresh the University’s editorial style guide. As part of my internship, I have been doing research to assist with this project. […]
Two upcoming Edinburgh data-related conferences
As we all settle into the new year, it is good to start filling the calendar with events that provide …Continue reading →
Happy 25th birthday Wikipedia!
Happy Birthday Wikipedia! Read more about Wikipedia’s 25 year history, covering its early days with a ‘then and now'(and what lies ahead), at the link below: https://wikipedia25.org/en At 25 years old it may be the olddddd man of the old Internet but Wikipedia still remains the largest reference work on the Internet and is now a […]
Data Management for Bioimaging – No-Cost, Easy-Access Tools for Edinburgh
This is a guest blog from Dr Ann Wheeler, Head of the Institute of Genetics and Cancer Advanced Imaging Resource …Continue reading →
How usability testing helped the Library to improve their website
The User Experience Service worked with colleagues from the Library to assist with their content development work. In this post, we’ll summarise what this collaboration involved and how it helped the Library to improve their site. Aims for this work In Autumn 2025, the Library team got in touch with the UX Service to get […]
A review of 2025 from a DLAM perspective
As 2025 comes to an end (and yes, I can barely believe it’s nearly 2026) it’s worthwhile to reflect on the past year. It’s been a quite a whirlwind. Not only has news and politics been pretty shocking and horrible this year (again!!!) but news about finances in UK HE …
Learning about the needs of deaf and hard of hearing students
In September, Nick and Mel from the UX team attended Assistive Technology Day, a training event organised by the Scottish Sensory Centre. Sessions focused on how technology can support deaf and hard of hearing students, with talks from educational audiologists and the JISC accessibility team. Part of our role in the UX Service is to […]
Helping students find support online: How usability tests of the student health and wellbeing site led to content improvements
When the team behind the health and wellbeing website contacted the UX Service for help improving their student-facing content ahead of the new academic year, we were happy to oblige. Adopting a coaching approach, we guided them through usability testing to identify and prioritise content changes, to make it easier for students to find out […]
Take a break with BoB: your holiday watchlists
Congratulations! You’ve almost made it to the end of semester one. The essays are submitted, the exams are done (or …Continue reading →
From sustainable design principles to practical W3C guidelines: Making digital sustainability happen through UX design
Contributing to the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines, I enjoyed working with talented editors and UX professionals to shape 21 guidelines in the User Experience Design category. In this post, I spotlight selected guidelines, reflecting on how they were written, and how they encapsulate the ethos of the principles behind them. The W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines […]
Shaping the future of the sustainable web: The advent and development of the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines
For the past year I have been part of a UX task force developing the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines. As the guidelines reach the milestone of Draft Note status, I reflect on what they stand to achieve, and share insights from our process to make these guidelines as useful and usable as possible. Increasingly, websites […]
Reflecting on a Drupal 7 to Drupal 10 Migration
In 2023, I started work on migrating three Drupal 7 websites over to Drupal 10. All three sites used a custom sub-theme based on Bootstrap 3. Each site had its own purpose, but they needed to look and feel similar. The main reason for the migration was that Drupal 7 was reaching its end-of-life.
November Content Improvement Club: Creating an event page that works for users
Content Improvement Club is our regular meetup for web publishers. In our November session we covered events pages. We worked in groups to create a journey map of the information people need from an events page at different points in time. We also spent time peer reviewing events pages people had brought along. We produce […]
5 things: supporting you in your exams
Semester one is almost over and exams are looming! As the exam period approaches, it’s natural to start feeling the …Continue reading →
Shorthand in the New College Special Collections
by Danielle Fox, Archive & Library Assistant, New College Library Shorthand writing, also known as tachygraphy, stenography, or brachygraphy, is …Continue reading →
From tablets to computer screens; digitising some of the oldest texts at the University.
by Elin Crotty, Archive & Library Assistant, New College Over the past few months, the two New College Archive and …Continue reading →
An analysis of responses to our editorial style guide survey
In October 2025, the User Experience Service ran a survey to learn about how University staff use the editorial style guide. In this post, Digital Content Style Guide Intern Hannah Watson summarises and analyses the responses. About the survey This survey focused on the usage and experience of those who have interacted with the style […]
How do students respond to AI in an enquiry service? What we learned testing AskEdHelp
Continuing our UX research on AI features, we worked with the EdHelp team to design and run user tests to learn how students respond to their ELM-enhanced online enquiry service, AskEdHelp. This post documents our methods, findings and recommendations. The inclusion of AI in online experiences is becoming the norm, and at the University, the […]
Reflections on the 2025 ContentEd online global conference
This is a joint blog with reflections from Katie Spearman and Mel Batcharj from the User Experience Service who attended the conference. This year the conference was online The ContentEd conference this year was a two-day event held completely online. There were some definite pros to this approach – there was a packed line up […]
On the threat of mass redundancy
For three days this week, colleagues at the University of Edinburgh are striking as part of UCU Edinburgh‘s ongoing industrial dispute with university management. Colleagues are protesting against the threat of mass redundancies resulting from a manufactured financial crisis. Many hidden redundancies have already taken place through non-renewal of contracts and staff opting to leave […]
Making a website better for users and the environment: Working on digital sustainability with Edinburgh Innovations
Last year, our Green Digital Design Intern audited the Edinburgh Innovations website for digital sustainability, and made several recommendations. This year’s internship went further – researching how users actually interacted with the site and uncovering potential to improve both the site’s UX and its environmental impact. In 2024 the UX Service and the wider Website […]
Growing our UX maturity by leading a UX Community Day for UK higher education institutions
Building on the success of our in-person UX conference last year, I worked with UCISA to organise and run a hybrid UX Community Day. It succeeded in bringing together 185 professionals from 60 institutes for a day of peer-to peer UX knowledge exchange. I reflect on organising an impactful and enriching event. Having ran the […]
Creative thinking, community-building, conversations: My takeaways from DrupalCamp Scotland 2025
With nine talks on topics ranging from Object-Oriented UX to Single Directory Components to image-management, DrupalCamp Scotland 2025 packed a lot into a day. I left with new insights, feedback on my work, and plenty of ideas for my University and Drupal UX leadership roles. Drupal is a highly capable, flexible and secure open-source content […]
Key insights from the 2025 UK Digital Leaders Summit day in Cambridge
I enjoyed taking part in the Digital Leaders Summit for 2025, organised by Boye & Co and hosted at the University of Cambridge. We achieved a lot in a single day – sharing work and ideas and discussing trends and challenges in digital leadership across multiple sectors. In my role running the University’s UX Service, […]
Scottish Web Folk conference 2025: the UX team reflect
Now in its third year, the annual Scottish Web Folk conference was organised and hosted by the brilliant Web Services team at the University of Dundee on 30 October. Nick, Katie and Emma from the UX Service enjoyed attending and delivering presentations. Here, they reflect on their highlights from a brilliant day of learning and […]
Six months of the new Effective Digital Content online course – reflections and next steps
The UX Service launched a new version of the Effective Digital Content online course in May this year. You can read about how we built the new version of the course in previously published blogs: Our six-part series on building the Effective Digital Content course Six practical tips: what we learnt building a new online […]
Kaltura Connect – November 2025
Nelly and I were invited to speak at Kaltura Connect in London today (at the fantastic Science Gallery @KCL). Kaltura is the service we use to provide our own Media Hopper Create service for media storage and streaming. It was a fun day, we got a chance to catch up …
Celebrating New Endings: Library & University Collections Publishes Updated Digital Preservation Policy
Excited to learn a defunct web forum for your favourite band as a teenager still exists in the Wayback Machine? …Continue reading →
Scottish Web Folk 2025: Challenging times, brilliant people
On 30 October, I was delighted to attend Scottish Web Folk at the University of Dundee. This was the second time I’d attended this particular conference – you can read about my previous experience here: Scottish Web Folk 2024: A portal practitioner’s perspective Generative AI was a major theme from both suppliers and institutions There […]
