New visions. New experiences.

Newcastle University’s 2020 Vision will increase its visibility and status as a world class research led organisation. Brought to life through its digital strategy, the vision will be pivotal in persuading undergraduates, postgraduates, international students and academic researchers as well as funders and business partners to become part of the University’s future.

We were appointed by the University in 2018 to support a three year programme of work to transform the user experience across its entire digital estate so that it could better communicate its vision and the opportunities available at the University to a global audience.

Supporting a user-centric design culture.

Our UX team worked closely with the Newcastle team to conduct user research and create personas and user journey maps that will improve the University’s understanding of user needs and behaviours.

Focusing on the University’s strategic goals for undergraduate, postgraduate and international student recruitment and research partnerships and funding, our ambition is to embed user-centricity and design thinking as the bedrock of continuous improvement for the University as it seeks to compete in the fiercely competitive HE marketplace.

Simplifying the user experience.

Our UI and content designers created new layouts to present information to users in simpler and more engaging ways. We designed a mixture of low and high-fidelity UI protypes depending on the complexity of the layout or functionality required. In some cases, our prototypes were tested for usability before being finalised.

The right content, in the right place, at the right time.

Our user research provided the foundations for every aspect of our design approach, including helping us to create new content strategies, content models, information architecture and a UI that delivers relevant content for users at different stages of their journey, regardless of where and how they choose to consume that information.

Measuring and optimising what matters.

We developed performance measurement frameworks and implemented site tagging to support digital leaders within the University to track interactions more effectively and to continuously refine and optimise user journeys and landing pages for optimal conversion performance.

Laying sustainable, scalable foundations for a simpler, transformative and enduring customer experience.

Alongside our project work, we also worked with the University’s internal teams to develop new design systems - style guides, design systems and development frameworks - that make use of reusable assets and components to drive efficiency and scalability into the process of designing, deploying and updating websites in the future.

This ensures that the improvements to the user experience we make are sustainable and scalable, while also bringing consistency to the user experience and reducing the resources required to manage the University’s web presence going forward.

Flexible, agile, collaborative working.

Working across multiple projects and with multiple stakeholders demands structure as well as flexibility and, of course, effective communication. Using a ‘hybrid-agile’ approach – structured around SCRUM and utilising a ‘Do-Test-Learn-Iterate’ model - enabled us to make rapid progress through frequent small releases – keeping project teams on track and ensuring stakeholders remained engaged throughout.