I’m really pleased to be sharing our Digital Comms roadmap for the next quarter. It’s the first time we’ve publicly shared it. It’s our way of explaining what we’ve done, what we’re doing and what we think we’re going be doing next.
Continue reading: Our new roadmap
Pair writing: Why we love it
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
Putting people at the centre of our research comms
6,000 members of staff and almost 28,000 students, six faculties, 28 schools and departments, 12 institutes, over 250 research groups, groups clusters and networks, and 14 divisions… The University of Bristol is, if nothing else, a complex institution.
Continue reading: Putting people at the centre of our research comms
Why every digital team needs a ‘DPAB’
I published a post last summer about the positive effect a new project management framework was having for us and those we work with. A lot has happened since then, but, through it all, DPAB has doggedly and determinedly continued to meet every Wednesday to triage, assess and prioritise. We couldn’t do without it. So, what is DPAB and why do you need one?
Continue reading: Why every digital team needs a ‘DPAB’
Improvements to the Clearing process: A technical overview
My colleague John Bourne recently wrote a post about our clearing application process covering the user experience improvements. In this post I’ll be delving into some of the technical work behind these.
Continue reading: Improvements to the Clearing process: A technical overview
Optimising the user experience of our Clearing pages
A-level results day is one of the most important days in the University calendar, and that applies to us in the digital team. One of the most important tasks for us is ensuring that any A-level students who enter clearing have all the information they need from our website to make a decision about whether (or not) they’d like to join us.
Continue reading: Optimising the user experience of our Clearing pages
Intranet design principles
We’ve been investing significantly in an intranet for University staff and postgraduate research students (PGRs). Previously our intranet content was scattered across our external website, seriously old internal content management systems, wikis and random crevices that only staff who’ve been at the University for decades would be able to find.
As we’ve just moved it out of beta and into live I thought it was a good opportunity to detail the design principles we’ve been using to inform its development.
It’s important to add we’re still at the early stages of a long journey. There’s a large roadmap of development ahead. But we believe that by sticking with these principles we can continue to build an intranet that will prove invaluable to all our staff and PGRs.
Content sprinting – part three
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
Love the problem
When colleagues from across the University come to us for help with their website, the first thing we ask them is: what’s your problem?
That sounds a bit rude and abrupt. Let me explain.
In any digital project or product this is the single most important question that needs answering. If there’s no problem to solve then there’s no work needed.
What do we mean by problem? What we don’t mean is that your website looks ugly, that it doesn’t look good on a mobile device, it doesn’t have the right tone, or that it’s not structured in a way that mirrors your team’s structure.
These aren’t problems, they’re solutions looking for a problem.Continue reading: Love the problem
Seven things you need to do to make your content accessible
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.
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