This week's screening: Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug

Next up in our regular series of lunchtime digital screenings is a usability test demo by Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability and Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems (both essential reading!).

In this short video (25 minutes) Steve will run through an example usability test - if you've ever thought of running a usability test yourself but aren't sure what types of questions to ask, this is a great place to start.

Everyone welcome, feel free to join us in HG17 Heslington Hall this Wednesday at 1pm.

Sprint notes for sprint 30

Course pages

Paul's work coding the newly designed course pages is close to completion, as is the first batch of content which is being developed. We're hoping the first pages will be ready to publish by the end of our next sprint (and we're quite excited!).

Digital content principles

As part of developing a consistent style for the University's digital content, Tasha has published six crucial digital content principles (internal only), available on our wiki pages.

A more detailed digital style guide is in the pipeline awaiting one final review.

Excellence Hub events

We've streamlined the process for adding Excellence Hub events, making it much easier for the Universities of Hull, Leeds, Sheffield and York to publicise events for high-achieving school and college students.

Currently there are 280 places available for subject taster sessions at York for students in years 7 - 11, and further sessions for sixth-formers at Sheffield and Hull. More events will be added throughout the year.

Site Manager survey

It's not too late to give us your feedback on the Web CMS! We'll keep the survey open until the end of the month, but don't delay, fill it in now!

Quick wins

Some of the smaller improvements we've made this sprint include:

• Setting up the shortcuts you'd expect to be in place - e.g. york.ac.uk/hr. This should make a significant impact on the number of 404 errors we receive each month.
• Moving more of the remaining old-style homepage layouts into the new multiple-columns format. It's so much easier to edit your columns!

And finally...

Don't forget to come to our Digital Screening and Show and Tell sessions (internal only), to learn more about what we've been up to.

Sprint notes for sprint 29

Sprints seem to go by in a flash lately. We've just wrapped up another busy two weeks, so here's what we've been up to...

Course pages

We've continued our work with an external agency on a new design and content for course pages. In the first instance these are for five departments, but in time the new design will be available for everyone.

The design of the page is done, so in this sprint just gone Paul has been busy building the code. In the sprint we're starting now, we'll hopefully finish that work and start integrating with the CMS.

In parallel with the coding work, we're also working on the new content for the course pages. It should all come together in the next few weeks...

Country pages

Following on from the focus day last sprint, Paul and Tasha have forged ahead with new country-specific pages for prospective international students.

Paul's been working on the details of the design and implementing it in the CMS. Tasha has worked with colleagues in the International Office to plan content development.

Content development toolkit

Producing web content isn't as easy as it looks. It's easy to put text and images on a page of course, but making that content effective is much tougher.

Tasha has continued work on a content development toolkit which will help us and everyone else at York to create consistent and compelling content.

We've finished some big-picture digital content principles this sprint. In the new sprint we're working on a nitty-gritty digital style guide, then hopefully we'll be ready to publish.

Site Manager survey

We've published a survey asking for your feedback about the web CMS and would really like as many people as possible to fill it in. We'll keep the survey open until the end of the month, but don't delay, fill it in soon!

New post in the team

Also this sprint, we've been working on a job description and advertising particulars for a new post in the team.

Watch this space for details coming soon...

Bits and bobs

There have been lots of small(ish!) jobs this sprint too - everything from amends to Study at York pages to scoring big piles of tender documents. If you're interested, you can see more on our wiki (UoY only).

Don't forget to come to Show and Tell (UoY only) and our digital screenings (UoY only) to find out more about what we're doing and learn with us.