Search all of our posts
Digital learning and teaching design sprints
The digital communications team is running two design sprints to help us improve the ‘My Courses’ portal for current students and the digital teaching environment for members of academic staff. During these design sprints, we will provide some baseline data about how the systems are currently performing and what the end-user requirements are. Then, participants…
11 March 2019Design
The digital retrospective summary
On Wednesday 27 February the digital communications team hosted the first Digital Forum. The aim of the session was to gain an understanding about how colleagues experience digital services and technology on a daily basis throughout the University. This post covers what happened at the forum, and some initial findings from the retrospective.
7 March 2019Digital Forum
Why we use YouTube instead of Vimeo
Based on advantages provided by YouTube, we have decided to no longer upload new video content to our Vimeo channel. All new content will be uploaded to the University of St Andrews YouTube channel.
4 March 2019Social Media
Improvements to accordions
Frequent users of the University website may have noticed a visual change to the accordion patterns. We have applied some much needed improvements to the accordion pattern in line with the design methodology of GOV.UK. Problems with the old accordions Use of colour The old accordions used our primary blue as an accent colour. This colour…
19 February 2019Digital pattern library
Making the University website accessible
New regulations which affect the University of St Andrews came into force on the 23 September 2018. These regulations state that a public sector body website must meet certain accessibility standards and publish an accessibility statement before the 23 September 2020. This post introduces the accessibility standards that need to be met, provides some basic…
13 February 2019Accessibility
Choosing image backgrounds for hero banners
Selection criteria for images appropriate for hero banners can be quite complicated. There are plenty of stunning photographs that would work well to welcome positive first impressions of a website, but are they fit for purpose?
11 February 2019Design
Why to avoid marketese on the web
Marketese is a writing style which favours promotional, self-congratulatory and boastful language over technical and objective wording. At the University of St Andrews, we aim to avoid using marketese on the web at all costs.
7 February 2019Content
The meeting formerly known as ‘DAB’
The Digital Advisory Board (DAB) has been replaced with the Digital Forum. The Digital Forum will take place on the last Wednesday afternoon of each month. All staff are welcome to attend. The format of the Digital Forum will be presentations, discussions and workshops. The Digital Forum will continue to provide updates on digital services…
4 February 2019Articles and resources Team
Top areas of school websites
The digital communications team have reviewed the University’s academic Schools website traffic to determine what the most popular parts of the websites are.
23 January 2019Data
2018 social media review
2018 saw another busy year for the University’s official social media channels. During the last 12 months, we have been working hard to increase our presence on social media by building our audience. To do this, we have been sharing posts aimed to encourage discussion and also to showcase the St Andrews student experience to…
21 January 2019Social Media