MyGlasgow News

Last year more than 1,000 staff and students took part in UofG’s first Top Tasks Survey. The MyGlasgow team have now analysed the responses to build a valuable dataset describing your priorities for your homepages and portals, writes Kat Husbands.

We’re learning so much from the thousands of votes and comments, and have had so many assumptions blown away, proving just how important it is to ask good questions and listen to our users.

Insights & impact

While the survey focused on MyGlasgow, many of the insights are relevant to the other websites, systems and services we all use daily.

Some insights will feed directly into work to improve the student and staff experience. Others have highlighted areas for further user experience (UX) research, for example into the ways students access and use Moodle.

The full results are below, but first here are some of the many ways the University can put the survey data to use:

• Exam timetables is the #1 web task for students, and Dates came in at #4. Both placed highly throughout the survey period of June to November, so students clearly want their calendars sorted as early as possible - an observation we’ve also backed up in user interviews. This has an impact for teams across the University, and could drive a collaborative effort to make this information available sooner and easier to find.
• Out of 72 student web tasks, Internships came in at #7, while Job vacancies and Career development are #14 and #20. Obviously students are keen figure out what they’re going to do after University, but it seems for many it’s even more important to get relevant experience while they’re still here. This insight could be valuable to Careers staff as they target, develop and promote their services.
• We relaunched the MyGlasgow Staff homepage last week with a new data-driven layout based on the Top Task Survey results. Staff now have access to more relevant links on a less cluttered page. This should improve user journeys and task completion, and later this week we’re starting a programme of regular testing and tweaking to ensure that's the case. A similar redesign is underway for the MyGlasgow Students homepage.

^{MyGlasgow Staff homepage before and after the redesign, with links to Top, Medium, Small and Tiny Tasks highlighted.}

Results in full

 

Top Task Testing

To keep the improvements coming, the UofG UX project team will be carrying out regular tests to make sure you can complete the top and medium tasks as quickly as possible. The Top Tasks Management method we’re using will clearly quantify the performance of our websites and systems, and help us monitor the effects of any changes.

Our first round of testing kicks off later this week, focusing on staff tasks. If you’d like to take part in this paid research, join the MyGlasgow User Panel and you’ll be the first to hear about opportunities.

We’re also starting to apply UX methods to Moodle, and will be using them extensively as we work on bringing in the new self-service platform.

Thanks

For their support in gathering tasks - and in whittling down the 186 task longlist! - the MyGlasgow team would like to thank: Student Services, HR, LEADS, RIS, the Library, Estates, Sport, the SRC, Internal Communications and the University Web Team.

Interested in the raw data?

Contact Kat.Husbands@glasgow.ac.uk for access.

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First published: 16 April 2018