At the end of July I attended the 2015 Institutional Web Management Workshop at Edge Hill University. Here I met colleagues responsible for the design, development and content of university websites across the UK.
The title of the conference was Beyond Digital: Transforming the Institution. A series of plenary talks, workshops and practical masterclasses addressed the theme.
Digital transformation
We heard from a few institutions who have achieved transformation to new digital services teams. They recognise that digital cuts across all of the university’s functions. It is not the sole preserve of IT or marketing and communications departments.
“The web is something the university has.
Digital is something the university is.”
Mike McConnell, Business Applications Manager, University of Aberdeen
The University of Bath’s Digital Team have adopted an agile approach to the creation and delivery of content. This approach allows them to deliver products iteratively and often. We use elements of this methodology on the Go Mobile programme. And are looking at ways to apply it throughout our working practice.
User needs
If you’ve talked to anyone from our team recently you’ll know we’re all about user needs. I attended a masterclass run by members of Bath’s editorial team on working in an agile way. This focused on the role of user stories in the development process. User stories help to frame requirements for products from the user’s perspective. For each user task identified a series of user stories are written, following the format:
As a… (user type)
I want/need… (task)
So that… (benefit)
The development team use these stories to find solutions that are focused on the user and meet their needs.
Many other universities are working on website projects just like Go Mobile. In a recent overhaul Liverpool John Moores University reduced the size of its website from 12,000 to 1,000 pages. They did this by focusing on what pages users were actually visiting. What’s more, all their content was brand new!
Conclusion
The conference was extremely valuable. It was good to hear from the people successfully leading transformation at their institutions. And great to meet new people in the same line of work to share ideas and experiences.
