At the University of Edinburgh, staff are our most valuable assets, yet the web content that represents their expertise, achievements and research was getting lost - neglected across a sprawling web estate, left out-of-date and failing the people it was supposed to serve.
A major platform migration gave us the opportunity to stop and ask a more fundamental question: what do staff actually need from a profile, and how do we design something that works for the full range of people behind it?
In this talk I'll share how my small UX team conducted mixed methods research to gather data from over 200 staff to not only uncover what they wanted from a profile, but also to help co-design a solution.
I'll explore how we extracted recommendations from reams of research data, navigated competing staff needs, and how we experimented with AI and automation thoughtfully to address the real blockers stopping people updating their content, I'll also share how, in the absence of an implementation project, I used a squad-based, product-led approach to build momentum, and how communicating our work openly brought in perspectives from other universities and wider content management systems facing similar challenges.
This is a talk about solving a problem that exists in almost every Higher Education institution - and about what happens when you keep human needs at the centre of a solution rather than letting the technology drive it.
Read more about this project in my blog posts: https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/website-communications/category/staff-profiles/
