I previously introduced QuillMark, a tool I built to help web publishers check content against the University’s editorial style guide. In this post, I explain the technical design and methodology behind the prototype. Introduction My name is Shlok, and this summer I am working as an AI and UX Innovation Intern in the Information Services […]
Blog Posts
Building QuillMark: testing a Drupal style-guide assistant with web publishers
I introduce QuillMark, a Drupal prototype designed to help web publishers check content against the University’s editorial style guide. I reflect on how I developed and tested the tool with publishers, focusing on what their feedback revealed about usability and how it will shape the next version. Introduction My name is Shlok, and this summer […]
What I am working on as a Digital Developer Intern (Figma)
In March, I started my internship as a Digital Developer within the Website and Communications team. My internship focuses on exploring Figma, the industry-leading digital design tool, and the user interface (UI) component library that the University has been developing within it. First impressions as an intern On my first day – somewhere between […]
What I loved about my first ever conference
What is DigAcc26? Digital Accessibility ‘26 (shortened to DigAcc26) is an annual hybrid conference organised by the University of Nottingham. As the name suggests, the topic of discussion is digital accessibility, with this year’s theme being ‘Preparing for the Future’ – no doubt a subject that is becoming increasingly pertinent in today’s technological climate. The event was […]
Notes from Versailles
The European Copyright Society held its 10th annual conference at the Château de Versailles on 29 May 2026, under the …Continue reading →
What I learned at UX Scotland 2026
UX Scotland is an annual two-day conference for people working in user-centred design. This year, I went along to the John McIntryre Centre to hear about the latest developments in UX. In this post, I’ll write about my highlights from the conference. Object-oriented UX in action: rebuilding a public sector website with structured content Joey […]
ISG: Where every day is a school day
I (David Buik) have recently been reflecting on how much I learn each day during my internship in the Information Services Group (ISG). As someone who loves learning, I like to think I try to make every day a school day, but it is striking how effortless this feels at ISG.
My first month as a Web Content Intern
Hi! I’m Elisa, a Web Content Intern this summer at the Information Services Group (ISG). I realise this isn’t the most descriptive of job titles; my work mostly consists of rebuilding content that was migrated from our old website platform, EdWeb1, to the new platform, EdWeb2. Today marks the completion of my first month at ISG. To be honest, the first few days on […]
Information Resources Intern’s first lessons: Time to unlearn “I like the look”?
My time at the Forrest Hill office as an Information Resources intern began four weeks ago under Edinburgh’s summer brilliance. Working as a part of the Portal Services team, I am responsible for creating and improving existing information resources about MyEd(the University’s online portal), including editing EdWeb2 pages, producing instructional videos, and refurnishing help […]
Redesigning the ‘Understand what your content is for’ module of the Effective Digital Content course
A year on from the relaunch of our Effective Digital Content online course, we’ve recently made some improvements, particularly in relation to the ‘Understand what your content is for’ module. We’ve rewritten the module, moving from a video to a text-based format. In this blog I’ll share a bit about the updates we’ve made and […]
Representing the University at UCISA Women in Tech 2026: My takeaways and reflections
I was pleased to have a talk accepted at the annual UCISA Women in Tech (WiT) conference. I went to Newcastle for a day of talks, workshops and networking. I left with a better understanding of the WiT community , and a reinforced appreciation of the need for inclusivity in Higher Education. UCISA is […]
Drupal In A Day: What we learned (and what we still want to learn): reflections from the UX team
Drupal In A Day (DIAD) is an in-person training event, designed as a beginner-friendly hands-on introduction to Drupal, the open-source content management system. When the University hosted DIAD, several of the UX team took the chance to attend. As content management systems go, Drupal is one of the mainstays. It’s been around for 25 years […]
Celebrating Edinburgh Medical School and Nursing Studies: Reflections from my first weeks as an intern
Guest post by Maya Field, Digital Heritage and Open Knowledge intern. Hello! I am Maya, this year’s Digital Heritage and Open Knowledge Intern at the University’s Information Services Group. My role this summer focuses on exploring the digital outputs that can be created to celebrate the heritage of both Edinburgh Medical School and Nursing Studies […]
Reimagining lifelong learning in HE
Reimagining Lifelong Learning in Higher Education was the theme of the Universities Association for Lifelong Learning Conference (UALL) and SCUTREA Conference this year, held at the University of Warwick. Here are my reflections on just a handful of th…
Cleaning Dirty Pages – The Power of the Smoke Sponge
By Abigail Hartley, Appraisal Archivist and Archive Collections Manager Moray House School of Education has a long and often complicated …Continue reading →
Reflections on almost a year of part-time accessibility testing
In this blog post, Digital Accessibility Intern David Buik reflects on his part-time work as a Digital Accessibility Intern over the past academic year, discussing a few challenges he faced as well as his key takeaways and successes.
How to run a usability test
In our May Content Improvement Club session, we focused on how to run a usability test. We ran through the basics of putting a script together, watched a clip from a test and had a go at prioritising some issues. Two problems for people working with content We started this session by outlining two problems […]
Reflections on the First Scottish Turnitin User Group Meeting
On 27th May, my colleague Tracey Madden and I attended the first Scottish Turnitin User Group meeting hosted in the University of Dundee. This is something I wished for since I took on the Turnitin Service Manager role four years ago. Very grateful for Glenn Thomas, the Turnitin Account Manager, and Emma Duke-Williams from University […]
Videos and images – when do they add value and not just page weight?
The carbon cost of using images and videos on a webpage often goes unnoticed but cumulatively can add up. Dono Abdurahmanova and I have presented at both the UCISA digital sustainability conference and the Green Software Foundation Scotland meet up in the last week or so on the topic of sustainable media use. The key […]
What is an accessibility statement?
In this blog post, Digital Accessibility Intern David Buik explains what accessibility statements are, what goes into making them, as well as things he has learned from experience in this domain. He also talks about a tool he has started developing to make the process more beginner-friendly and efficient.
My first week as an Open Educational Resources Intern
Hello! I’m Charlotte, this year’s Open Educational Resources (OER) summer intern within the University’s Information Services Group. My first week […]
What is an accessibility statement?
In this blog post, Digital Accessibility Intern David Buik explains what accessibility statements are, what goes into making them, as well as things he has learned from experience in this domain. He also talks about a tool he has started developing to make the process more beginner-friendly and efficient.
What is an accessibility statement?
In this blog post, Digital Accessibility Intern David Buik explains what accessibility statements are, what goes into making them, as well as things he has learned from experience in this domain. He also talks about a tool he has started developing to make the process more beginner-friendly and efficient.
University of Edinburgh OER Policy update – Copyright, AI and OER
The relationship between Gen AI and the Commons is thorny to say the least, with copyright legislation in many jurisdictions struggling to keep up with the rapid pace of change and to address fundamental questions about the nature of creativity. What is it that distinguishes human creativity? What happens when Gen AI is used to […]
Testing Our Readiness: Learn Resilience Exercise
On Tuesday 2 June, colleagues from LTW teams came together for a Learn Resilience Exercise. The purpose was to test how we would respond if one of the University’s key teaching and learning systems became unavailable, and to think practically about wha…
Embedding the rules: What we learned UX testing a style guide helper tool built with Drupal Editoria11y
Our Editorial Style Guide contains many conventions and we know from research that publishers struggle to remember to apply them. Could automation help? We experimented embedding style guide rules into a Drupal module that checked content against the rules in the editorial interface and suggested corrections when the rules weren’t followed. As part of a […]
Do students actually watch videos?
It is difficult to think of a university that does not treat video as a core part of its content strategy. Across admissions, communications, and academic departments, the assumption has quietly taken hold that if something can be filmed, an open day, a student or alumni testimonial, it probably should be. The result is that […]
Stop chasing, keep researching: Why continuous contextual learning is the only way to build useful AI features
AI development keeps evolving as do the ways people seek to use AI. Traditional software development runs the risk of trying to perfect AI features people won’t use. Revisiting our previous AI research helped me tease out new opportunity spaces for AI features to help with content design tasks. Last summer, Mostafa Ebid joined the […]
When good product practice tells you to stop: What we learned trying to externalise our Effective Digital Content course
Riding on the success of our internal Effective Digital Content course, we set out to expand by building an external version for the short courses platform, taking a product thinking approach. Three months on, experimenting with a proof-of-concept course has convinced to pause this work – to avoid falling into a build trap. The success […]
What we learned from Power BI training
In May, Mel and Nick from the UX team attended two days of Power BI training with QA. The training covered the basics of using Power BI Desktop and, through a mix of instructor-led and independent exercises, gave us a chance to transform data and build visualisations. Mel’s reflections Before the training, I’d only ever […]
Please complete SPARC Survey
SPARC Europe and we, as ENOEL open education advocates, seek to gain more insights into open education (OE) policy and practices within academic libraries of Higher Education, Teaching and Learning Centres and other academic support units in Europe via a new survey. Many of you contributed in previous years, and we would like to thank you again […]
Reflecting on the Little Things at the 24th Durham Blackboard Users’ Conference
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…
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 […]
