Keeping it real – optimising ‘social proof’ in postgraduate recruitment

Posted on by Nabila Hisbaron

A great indicator that you’ve designed a delightful user experience is having happy customers advocate for you, speaking positively about your products to family, friends, and – if you’re lucky enough to make an influencer happy – their online followers.

This is an example of ‘social proof’, and in this post our UX Designer Nabila Hisbaron talks us through our use of social proof to support postgraduate student recruitment.

In a recent user research sprint, we learned just how important social proofing can be for potential postgraduate applicants.

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Understanding digital in the context of a university

Posted on by Rhiannon Davies

The term ‘digital’ is ubiquitous and has become a part of our everyday vocabulary – the digital revolution has impacted every aspect of our lives. And universities are no exception, digital transformation has brought significant change to the way we learn, teach, conduct research and work.

So, what does ‘digital’ mean in the context of a university? Rhiannon Davies, our Deputy Director of Digital Experience, shares her thoughts.

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Is data the only way to identify priorities in improving our digital services?

Posted on by John Bourne

John, our Senior Digital Product Manager, looks at our approaches to decision making and discusses how a relentless focus on data alone can be an issue for our team.

It’s vital to ensure your digital products are data-driven, right? Countless blog posts champion and showcase how to utilise data in a better way. But how do you manage this with limited resources?

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Easy improvements for users of the Students’ Health Service

Posted on by Vicky Gierat

How we combined data and knowledge to make a category page work better for users. 

A category page (sometimes called ‘section homepage’ or just ‘homepage’ here at the University) fulfils many functions on a website. It showcases the service, is usually the most visited page, and is the one page above all others that senior staff want a say in shaping.  

The real purpose of this page is often lost in the ‘make it look dynamic!’ hype. As all good content designers know, websites exist to give our users what they need, and the number one place to do this is the service category page. And yet at the University we often find category pages are plagued with issues such as: 

  • the content our users want is hard to find or missing altogether.
  • content loses focus because of ad hoc changes over time. 

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PDFs and accessibility, part 1: making our organisation chart accessible

Posted on by Rob Mayo

Organisation charts presented in PDF format are one of the worst offenders when it comes to accessibility. Rob, from our Content Design team, explains how he turned one such chart into accessible HTML content.

When the bristol.ac.uk site was audited by Government Digital Services last year, one of the main issues that we had to fix was inaccessible PDFs.

PDFs pose particular problems for anyone with accessibility needs. It is possible to painstakingly add all of the structural tags for titles and headings so that the PDF passes accessibility criteria, but it’s unlikely that the effort will pay off; if someone finds 99% of PDFs that they encounter inaccessible, they’re not going to take the risk of opening another.

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Digital is really about people: what I’ve learned from working with the University of Bristol Digital Experience team

Posted on by Digital Experience team

A guest post by Neil Gunn, Digital Delivery and Performance Consultant.

I’ve had the distinct pleasure of working with the University’s in-house Digital Experience team since November 2022, to support them in a consultancy capacity to optimise their internal process and workflows, and make the most out of their limited resource.

On my last day with the team, I’ve paused to reflect on what I’ve learned about them and myself.

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We’re hiring! UX Consultant

Posted on by Nabila Hisbaron

Applications for this post have now closed.

We’re looking for an agency or freelance contractor to help us design user-centred products and services at the University.

    • Contract details: 4 month contract, November 22 – February 23 
    • Location: Hybrid working – homebased, with days in our city centre office every Wednesday and Thursday 
    • Work pattern: The role is on a full-time basis, though hours can be flexible. 
    • Reporting to: Senior Digital Product Manager  

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We’re hiring! Digital Delivery And Performance consultant

Posted on by Rhiannon Davies

Applications for this post have now closed.

We’re looking for an agency or freelance contractor to help us jump start an exciting change to the way we deliver digital products and services at the University.

    • Contract details: 4 month contract, November 2022 to February 2023.
    • Location: Hybrid working – home-based, with days in our city centre office every Wednesday and Thursday.
    • Work pattern: The role is on a full-time basis (35 hours), though hours can be flexible.
    • Reporting to: Acting Deputy Director of Digital Experience.

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Pair writing: Why we love it

Posted on by Hazel Jackson and Katie Manktelow

Digital officers Katie Manktelow and Hazel Jackson have pair written their top tips for pair writing.

As the saying goes, two heads are better than one. Pair writing is two (or more) people writing together. Introduced by agile software developers who were writing code, it’s now common practice in content design teams including our own. We use this approach to write copy for the website.
Continue reading: Pair writing: Why we love it