Equitable digital student user experiences with UoL Services

Sarah Turner (IT Services)

Project overview

According to the Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations, the University must create services that are accessible and inclusive. This aligns with the University’s aims to enables others, celebrate and progress equality and inclusion, through improved student access and success. Student user research is not consistently completed on IT projects, this can have a negative impact on service design and success.

IT Services want to support the University’s strategic objectives via a human-centred design approach, but this requires dedicated research and user input that is not currently possible. This research enables us to create more equitable experiences for users with different needs and drive excellence in user experience for all.

Having previously worked in Product and User Centric Design in Government as a Digital Inclusion Consultant, I am passionate about treating our users (students and otherwise) as trusted partners in the design process of our products, so that we building services that truly meet the needs of those who use them.

The research approach

Qualitative
Story Circles: When gathering information, rather than a fixed set of questions, we propose students tell us about their experiences when using IT services. This kind of rich data will provide us with a good understanding of pain points, user needs and wants of the services.
Design Workshops: In the co-creation stage, it is intended that design workshops will enable IT service colleagues and students to work together to examine the findings from our discovery phase and then create the design principles that will improve the user experience for our student users.

Quantitative
Secondary research: To understand user habits and preferences.

If you would like to find out more about the project contact Sarah Turner

Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn

Each fellowship has a project sponsor that helps the fellows achieve impact across the institution. The sponsor for this fellowship is Claire Smith

Project start date: September 2025