Design Sprints are producing some brilliant ideas, most of which are being voted on very well and prototyped for testing with prospective students, current students and staff.
To the folks who took the time to comment on these – big thanks! For those who haven’t, you can still add your comments and we encourage you to have your say. Positive, negative or neutral, everything will be read and taken into consideration.
We should also take the time to say thanks again to those who participated in a Design Sprint – there would be no ideas to test without you.
How will the ideas and feedback from the tests impact the new website?
The tender process for a new content management system is well under way. A decision will be made in July. This will kick off the process of creating new content, new designs and all the development work that will help build a brand new and improved website.
The ideas that people vote on and comment on during the Design Sprint process will be part of the new website creation process. For example, staff profiles will be created taking into account your comments. And we now have a great view of what people need from their profile (and it varies greatly).
Information gleaned from Design Sprints will feed into work on website information architecture (how content is structured), content modeling (defining elements for each content type), content writing, design, and development.
Are there common themes that will inform the new website?
We constantly hear certain words and phrases from people participating in Design Sprints that clarify that there are some common themes to consider when creating your new website.
« Personalization »
Automatic personalization of content, design and user experience to best suit the needs of a website visitor. Examples include learning what topics a visitor is interested in, the type of events, or form prefill information such as country by IP address.
« Labeling »
Adding a tag to content so that it can be related to similar content and then displayed as a group of related content to visitors interested in that topic. For example, we may tag content such as news, events, courses and research personnel with « sustainability » and display it on a topic page for that term.
« A single source of truth »
Create a content item in one place and reuse it, rather than recreate it. This ensures consistency and quality.
“Student Voice”
Letting the students do the talking when it comes to telling the world about our courses, events and so on.
“On Brand”
Participants discussed the importance of following the brand guidelines.
« Sense of Community »
How we tell people about the strong sense of staff and student community on campus.
What’s next?
We are building a new university website. This will incorporate ideas from the 20+ design sprints performed in 2018 and 2019. Look for more design sprints in the future!
