Strategy | UCD practices | Training
Workshops | Building capability | User research | Requirements gathering
UWE Bristol's DXP (digital experience) team were focused on updating their outdated student experience by providing a digital platform that provides a single unified location for students to access the information, tasks and systems they need through their student lifetime. However, they had no research resource in the team. I worked to support their internal team with building core UX capability through a structured 12 week training programme.
Project goals
​
-
Build immediate and longer-term user research and UCD capability in DXP through paired on-project working, co-design sessions and bespoke training.
-
Build the foundation of a research ops, creating research templates (recruitment screener, discussion guide, report) and resources (check-list and research instructions) for future work to build on.
-
Provide ongoing research capability support through research work reviews.
Through this training, I looked to upskill the team to:
-
Understand and apply a more user-centred design process at UWE, ensuring that our workflow starts to incorporate design thinking best practices, and places the needs of users at the centre of our designs on the UWE student dashboard
-
Learn how best to plan research activities to ensure we are understanding and validated our designs based on evidence
-
Run a focused round of usability testing on the student dashboard, and be confident applying our learnings to future research activities
-
Apply our learnings from the research to improve and iterate the student dashboard designs moving into development
Requirements gathering workshop
Before kicking off this programme of work, I wanted to determine the core objectives of the DXP team and understand capability gaps that can be supported through a tailored training programme. 


After several initial calls with DXPs lead product owner, I ran a capability scoping and requirements workshop with core members of the DXP team to better their current backlog and, team roles/responsibilities and priority gaps in UX capability. The outcome of this workshop was to develop a tailored training programme that would provide the most value when upskilling core team members in user-centred design methodologies.
.jpg)
Activities I covered in the workshop
-
Defining core projects, features, user journeys that were currently in their team backlog. This gave me a better understanding of how to integrate existing workstreams into a structured training programme
-
Prioritisation of backlog. This allowed me to understand the key areas of focus and priority objectives in the DXP team
-
Defining team structure and core roles. This ensured I could build a training programme around the right team members and their existing skill sets
-
Evaluating UX capability in their team (see first image). This was an assessment process to determine which key areas we should focus our training.
-
Prioritisation of UX capability skills (see second image) . I then determined, based on our assessment exercise, which areas of UX should be the focus of our training programme.
​
Developing a tailored training programme
Based on the outcomes of the scoping workshop, I determined a set of priority areas to build UX capability in the team. I focused on building qualitative user research understanding, capability and processes on the DXP team. DXPs business analysts and primary designer were the two core members of staff to attend the training full time, with staff from the wider business attending more general training modules.
To ensure that training and capability was delivered based on tangible DXP work, I ran this package of training through key MVP backlog requirements, grounding the research process in real-world examples that can be applied in future work.
​
The modules
Module 1: Introduction to user-centred design.
In this module, we covered the key principles of user-centred design, including common frameworks for how to adopt a design process that places users at the heart of products and services.
Module 2: Planning research In this module, we covered how to scope and plan research in a project. This includes how to define objectives, write research questions and choose the right research methodologies.
Module 3: Conducting research
In this module, we covered how to conduct research. This includes how to write a discussion guide, recruit participants, facilitate and run usability testing sessions (both in person and remotely).
Module 4: Analysing and reporting results
In this module, we covered to analyse our research findings. This includes different methods of analysis, and how to translate findings into UX artefacts and design requirments (reports, journey maps, personas).
​
Training alongside real research
An example of a training session
With each stage of the research project, I delivered a focused 2 hour training session with the team. For example, before we began planning the research, I walked through an introduction to UX. In this module, I covered all the fundamentals of UX, UI and design thinking, key principles of UCD, and common models (such as the double diamond, GOV service standard etc.). We then applied our learnings to the DXP project in a collaborative co-design session.
I particularly enjoyed this project as it encapsulated for me the value of leaving a legacy of knowledge. By equiping the team with the introductory skills, knowledge and resources to undertake a UCD approach, they were able to continue to conduct research and design products based on user needs after I'd left the project.