Concept Design Feedback, seems all good...

It's been a week and a half since I took delivery of the new concept designs for the website and there's been a flurry of activity around collecting feedback! Last week was a round of showcases for board members as well as a week of collecting comments from students at our De Havilland campus.

The good news is that we are running at 92% positive feedback on the new designs overall and when we filter out the staff feedback we are at 94% positive for our students. Not a bad number and we still have a week of feedback to collect as well...

Having a mixture of Yes/No questions with narrative follow ups has allowed us to pick up on recurrent themes within the comments and is highlighting what we should be addressing in order to get as close to 100% positive as possible. No shockers so far which is good and hopefully I can roll out a very small preview closer to us going live!

Interestingly, within the questions we started to tease out some feedback on mobile usage, currently we only have 49% of our students/staff accessing the University website on their mobile phone, mainly due to the awkwardness of navigation. However, when asked if they would use the site if it were responsive the number went up to 63%... highlights that mobile usage is more front of mind than some people may think!

Concept designs have arrived!

One of the most asked questions when running through a digital project is "What will it look like?" which is usually followed by a statement such as "I know a few things about design, i'd be happy to help you..."

The presentation of new designs can be an exciting time in the project but requires close management on what happens with the feedback given. All comments are valid but there needs to be an assessment of the impact suggestions can have and how they might impact on the overall business requirements. I have just taken delivery of the new concepts designs for the website from Squiz's Head of Design Matt and they look amazing! Although I have my preference over which design I prefer I now need to keep a neutral hat on whilst showcasing the designs to all stakeholders.

So for the next two weeks I will be collecting feedback, collating suggestions and starting to draw out the comments that keep cropping up. This should give me a good understanding of any potential issues and then how to rectify them. Ultimately there will need to be a decision on what not to action...

So, a significant step in the project that all stakeholders can participate in, is that a good or a bad thing!

I'm famous! Well, sort of...

Eight months after the Google Street View trike visited my old work the images are up and running on Google Maps.

What I hadn't realised was that I would have a starring role at all three locations... Here I am loitering at the Luton campus:


View Larger Map

But, can you complete the game of "Where's Kris" and find me at the Putteridge Bury and Bedford campuses!

Happy New Year!

A very quick post to say Happy New Year! 2012 has been a fantastic year with a website launch, a new job and a new project under my belt.

However, 2013 looks as though it will prove to be even better, 6 months to go with the new website project and then a few more potential projects to follow.

Exciting times ahead!

Business Cloud Summit 2012 - Cloudstore discussions

I had the great pleasure of speaking at the Business Cloud Summit 2012, held at the Hilton London Metropole last week. I was invited to speak on the subject of the moment, procurement via the HM Government Cloudstore. Along with my fellow invitee, Peter Edwards from the British Council, I spent half an hour explaining how the Cloudstore has helped to facilitate the purchase of a new CMS for the University of Hertfordshire and the cost & time savings that this has helped me realise.

I have always been a huge advocate for any system/process that helps to streamline my day-today working. The Cloudstore has achieved this and also has the potential to help with other projects outside of my remit. However, the most surprising part of the day for me was the 'straw poll' held during the session to see who has also used it. In a room of around 100 people only 3 held their hands up...

I think what this highlights is not that the Cloudstore is a difficult tool to use or that there isn't a very dedicated team behind it. It highlights that this is such a change in the way that procurement processes are run within central & local government and HE that there is still work to do on promoting it! The Cloudstore is there to help facilitate an easy procurement process, cut red tape and save us time and money. It's a no-brainer that if you can use it, you should use it!

I will happily continue to promote the Cloudstore as the first stop for procurement I just hope that it gains the recognition and promotion it deserves!

Images from the event can be seen below:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Workshops, Workshops, Workshops...

We are now into the latter half of the Workshop sessions with Squiz to look at what we want to include in the new University website. Some workshops have been great (wireframes, design, etc) and some have been rather slow, but necessary, Metadata & taxonomy for example (Sorry Nelson!)

However, what does appear to be coming out in these meetings is that the are very similar ides around what the website should do. For example, functionality wise people expect the website to degrade well when viewed on a mobile device. If that question was asked a few years ago people wouldn't have put a Responsive Design at the top of their lists! This not only highlights the fact that people are aware of smart phones but also that they way in which people are using them is changing as well. We currently have 15% of all our visitors coming to us on a mobile device, that's double the figure for this time last year... This highlights the moving target we are dealing with, potentially as soon as we deliver the website we will need to start development work to keep up with the evolving market! A great argument for a structured development plan...

However, one of the most exciting parts of the analysis stage (for me) is looking at what issues people currently have and how they can be fixed, effectively trying to make peoples lives easier! The list is reasonably long, as you would expect with a project this size, but so far nothing has been highlighted that can't be dealt with.

As we roll into our last few weeks of workshops it make me even more confident that the next 7 months will be extremely exciting...

Movember - I've reached the creepy stage...

I think this video sums up how most of the University of Hertfordshire Movember team are feeling at the moment...

It's not too late to donate and make it all worth while though! - http://mobro.co/kriscollins