Author: Charlotte Brewer

Content sprinting – part three

Posted on by Charlotte Brewer
Fees and funding web content - show and tell
The show and tell for our latest sprint was held virtually, via Skype.

The third part of digital officer Charlotte Brewer’s series on content sprinting.

This post was actually written a while ago. We planned to release it as part of our series on ‘Content Sprinting’. Then lockdown started. Hitting the publish button fell down the list of priorities. 

Despite lockdown, and despite everyone working from home and all the challenges that has brought, we’re actually still working in exactly the same way. We’re still sprinting. We’re still doing everything we did before. Everything in this blog post remains accurate. The only difference is that all our meetings and our conversations are via Skype.  
Continue reading: Content sprinting – part three

Seven things you need to do to make your content accessible

Posted on by Charlotte Brewer

Our previous accessibility blog post explored some of the barriers that people face when they read online content. Barriers that stop people from being able to use the content.

Creating clear and accessible content has always been important. It means everyone can use and understand it.

However, as more and more services move online, it’s even more important that we reduce these barriers. It’s even more important to create clear and accessible content.

Accessibility symbols
Symbols highlighting different needs. Mobility issues, cognitive problems, hearing problems and vision impairments.

Here are seven things every content professional needs to do to make their content accessible.Continue reading: Seven things you need to do to make your content accessible

Content sprinting – part two

Posted on by Charlotte Brewer

The second part of digital officer Charlotte Brewer’s series on content sprinting. 

In my last blog post about the sprint way of working, I introduced it as a concept and looked at how we did sprint planning. In this post, I’ll show what it’s like to do the work as part of the content team in a sprint.

Do the work 

Once the sprint planning meeting is over, we get stuck into the list of tasks.   

Each task is a specific, distinct thing that we need to do to complete the goal of the sprint. For our students’ Top Tasks sprint, these included:  

  • Draft a template invitation email 
  • Book rooms  
  • Contact an International Officer to get list of international students  
  • Email these students an invitation to a focus group 
  • Contact the Mature Student Adviser to get list of mature students  
  • Email these students an invitation to a focus group 
  • Collate a list of URLs across the website that answers students’ FAQs (spoiler: there is a lot of duplication) 

Once we finish one task, we move onto the next task. Some of these are small enough for one of us to easily complete it. Others are bigger and need us all to work on it at once. Some tasks are straightforward, while some become blocked. This is where daily stand-ups come in.   

Continue reading: Content sprinting – part two

Content sprinting – part one

Posted on by Charlotte Brewer

It’s not only software that benefits from being delivered in sprints. Digital officer Charlotte Brewer discusses the practicalities of “content sprinting”. 

Sprinting – an act or short spell of running at full speed. That’s the traditional definition. Since the times of the Ancient Greeks, the sprint has been seen as the pinnacle of the athletic world. And in the last decade or so, it’s also become popular in the world of work.  

Software teams have been taking up ‘Agile’ practices that quickly deliver lots of small but functional improvements. Sprinting is fundamental to this. Like the sporting version, sprinting involves a lot of effort over a short space of time.   

In the Digital Comms team, we’ve started to adopt this approach in the way we deliver new content. Our newly–formed content team has now completed five sprints since we started this new way of working in October. Continue reading: Content sprinting – part one

User testing on the cheap 

Posted on by Charlotte Brewer

User testing is the cornerstone of every successful project. And, say digital officers Charlotte Brewer and Geraint Northam, it needn’t break the bank. 

User testing tends to be thought of as a lot of work. Planning, finding volunteers, making sure they turn up, preparing and managing the session, reporting and summarising it afterwards – all take significant time and effort. 

It’s worth it. As a digital team we want to find problems, solve them, and improve the user experience. This then allows the University to meet its business objectives. 

But does it have to be so time-consuming? We’ve started to embrace ‘user testing on the cheap’ – quick, small tests done often. Continue reading: User testing on the cheap 

If our content’s not accessible it’s not usable

Posted on by Charlotte Brewer

Digital officer Charlotte Brewer on why accessibility in web content should never be an afterthought.

It’s really easy to create content, but it’s also really easy to create content that’s hard to use.  

It is easy to assume if I can use it, it’s fine.  

This assumption ignores the fact that other people may not be fine with your content. It ignores people with a disability or cognitive condition who might struggle to use your content.  

This is why accessibility is so important. Put simply, accessibility is about making sure everyone can use the content you create.  

When I first started my career, I honestly didn’t think about accessibility. I am a native English speaker, with no disabilities or diagnosed learning conditions. The thought that anyone might struggle with the content I created didn’t cross my mind.  Continue reading: If our content’s not accessible it’s not usable