Not sure what a Design Sprint is? These are fun and interactive problem solving sessions with students, staff and other key members of the public. For more information, read Participate in a Design Sprint to shape future website experiences
Our third Design Sprint took place on March 13, 2018. 16 people from External Relations, Medical School and Business Transformation came together with Steve (Design Manager) and myself (UX Manager) from the Web Services Team.
| External Relations Department | |
| Access and Participation | 1 |
| Candidate admissions and experience | 1 |
| Communications between applicants and applicants | 1 |
| Global Engagement and Recruitment | 1 |
| Marketing and comunication | 4 |
| Web services | 3 |
| medical school | |
| Medicine Office | 2 |
| Postgraduate medical education | 2 |
| University Management Secretariat | |
| Business transformation | 1 |
| Total | 16 |
We had a fun and informative day working together trying to solve one of the many problems we face as we create a new university website. Our challenge for the day was:
« How can we improve the experience on the course page? »
Morning, Day 1: Review the problem together
The first part of the Design Sprint saw Steve and I present some background information on the problem.
We started by discussing user frustration.
Evidence of user frustration:
- Page length
- Clarity of key information
- Mobile browsing
- Design issues
We then discussed the core activities that have been identified and voted on by applicants and current students. This gave participants proof of the priority in which content could be presented.
Main tasks for candidates
| Position | Task |
| 1 | Check the admission requirements for a course |
| 2 | Look at the modules of a course and how they are taught and assessed |
| 3 | Search for a course |
| 8 | Compare two or more courses |
| 9 = | View a list of courses and filter them |
Main tasks for current students
| Position | Task |
| 3 | Consult the list of module/course deadlines for the whole year |
| 6 | Look at the modules of a course and how they are taught and assessed |
| 8 | See what’s on the reading list for a specific course |
| 10 | Find out more details about a course |
User feedback
We then moved on to discuss the feedback that has been provided on existing pages, using our feedback gathering tool.
User paths
Using one of our analytics tools, we are able to select a page and see the inbound and outbound paths for the page. Below is an example of an existing degree program page.
We can see that just over 44% of the traffic to this page is generated by search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. Nearly 46% percent come from internal pages on dundee.ac.uk. 7.4% is direct traffic: this means that someone entered the web address directly or saved it as a bookmark. Finally, just under 3% comes from external sites.
Definition of content requirements
After discussing the issue, we moved on to discussing how to define content requirements.
We also looked at the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) publication entitled ‘Guide to providing information for prospective university students’. This guide is intended to help higher education providers follow best practice in providing easily accessible information for prospective students to use in their higher education study decisions.
Download the guide
We then gave the participants the task of brainstorming the content requirements for a course page and how it should be prioritized.
Problem and content discussion
Before thinking about solutions, we asked participants « Do we fully understand the problem? »
- What is it your experience of the problem?
- Let’s review the post-its
Photos: Examples of content ideas for course pages created by participating teams during the Design Sprint
Photos: Examples of content ideas for course pages created by participating teams during the Design Sprint
Afternoon, Day 1: Brainstorm for a solution
After the free lunch (come to the next Design Sprint and you’ll have lunch too!), we discussed how to measure success by setting goals using the HEART framework.
Happiness
User attitudes, often gleaned from a survey
Engagement
Frequency, intensity or depth of the interaction
Adoption
Acquiring new users of a product or feature
Retention
The rate at which existing users return
Completion of the activity
Efficiency, effectiveness and error rate
We also discussed how the course page might suit different audiences. For example, depending on where someone is browsing from, would it be beneficial for the user to see a reduced set of login requirements?
8 crazy
Now it was time to move on to the first sketch of the day.
Participants fold an A3 sheet of paper into eight rectangles.
Then they sketch an idea in each rectangle or sketch a trip.
We therefore give participants the following guide.
- Choose the quantity, don’t worry about the details or making them beautiful, just try to convey your idea
- Focus on the main elements or just a part of the page
- Weird, impossible, and impractical ideas often give way to truly inspired ones
Eight ideas in eight minutes. GO!
The countdown we played for the last 30 seconds of the 8 minutes
Once participants completed their eight sketches, we asked each to submit their ideas and then each voted on their favorite ideas.
Photo: one of the participants presenting their Crazy 8
Photo: One of the Crazy 8 sketches with grades
Solution sketches
After running the Crazy 8s and voting, the participants were given 30 minutes to design a solution based on the ideas of the Crazy 8s and what had been voted on.
Photo: Participants discuss their solution sketches
Photo: one of the sketches with grades
Once the discussion and voting was complete, the group met to discuss which elements of the concept art would make it to the prototype stage.
Day 2: Prototyping a solution
To test the ideas from the voted solutions, a prototype was designed by Steve, our Design Manager.
While this isn’t the final design, it does allow us to share the prototype for testing and feedback from the wider community.
Photo: the first page of the prototype
View the full prototype and provide feedback
Take a look at the course page prototype and add your comments (keeping in mind the problem we are trying to solve). This prototype has interactive areas you can click to see other pages and tips.
Course page mockup
Did you participate in the Design Sprint? Thank you!
We’d like to thank everyone who took a day out of their schedule to join us on the journey to a new course page experience.
There were great ideas and discussions throughout the day and Steve and I were furiously taking notes all day to fuel the design process.
Didn’t do the Design Sprint? Join us next time.
We have Design Sprints booked every two weeks on Tuesdays throughout 2018.
Check out the list below and reserve the Design Sprint or two of your choice.
A day may seem like a lot of time to spend, but when you consider that our website has over 3.5 million visitors a year from every country in the world, then it’s vitally important that we succeed. We can’t do this without engagement from the university community, so anything you can do to get involved or encourage others to participate would be greatly appreciated!
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