Experience design is a method for understanding how we create better experiences for our customers by thinking not just about the isolated touchpoints or functional elements within a journey, but about how our customers feel, and what their experience is actually like.

So you’re about to embark on a digital transformation project? What does that actually mean? In our experience, digital transformation is rarely about technology. It’s more often about culture, content, user experience and a myriad of other things.

One evening recently a thought popped into my head: What would happen if I gave creative control over a university brand and content project to AI-tools like ChatGPT and DALL·E 2?

Within an hour or two I had somehow become the unlikely founder of a new university:

The University of Anywhere.

When I talk about a brand strategy, what do you expect that to include?

For years now I’ve grappled with understanding where brand strategy ends and content strategy begins. As a content strategist I’ve had to retrofit more brand strategies and brand visions than I care to count. Brand strategies are rarely fit for purpose to meaningfully bridge the intention of the brand vision with the actual reality of the lived experience of that brand and everything in between.

Defining what makes a university distinct from others can be quite tricky. There’s not a lot of reputational space in which to play - so if we’re starting to think we’re the same as everyone else, how do we really make our university feel different?

Last week, thousands of students found out which universities they were heading to - and the majority of the UK education sector has been focused on helping some of them find places through Clearing. Now, they’re moving on to the next big milestone: arriving at university.

At its heart though, your content needs to see this as an extension of the application process. Your students’ experience doesn’t start now. It began months ago.

“We want to be seen as bold and pioneering, but we want to follow other people already doing it and be extra cautious about what we do.”

It’s a common occurrence that we see with clients over the years, the desire to be bold but not actually behaving in line with their brand strategy and organisational vision. This blog talks about our new BCE model which will help your team overcome these problems, and helps to create the best experience for your audience.

There are very few things that I think are “wrong” in how we might approach any project. But today, I’m going to share ones that I have some pretty strong opinions about when it comes to website redesign, and why your planning for any redesign probably needs to start sooner than you think.

How can you make peer-to-peer a pillar of your conversion strategy? Try these three ways: outbound via SMS/texting, inbound through messaging, video or chat, and anonymously through reddit.

We all know prospective students need a lot of information to help them make a decision about where and what to study. And it makes sense to provide that information in a manner that’s as useful as possible. But that means we need to make some informed decisions of our own about what information should be presented in what kind of format.

The person that made this sign wanted to help their users (thank you!). But they did so from the context of the building/employees, not from the context of the user. Everyone in the building knows that’s the second floor. Not every user walking in the door does.

To innovate in higher ed, we just have to look at other industries. Copy these five lessons learned from real estate, food delivery, retail, and fitness.

Rich explains how you can use Experience design to plan and create effective experiences for students, educators, researchers and administrators.

Throughout our company history we’ve always looked for and leaned into new frontiers in education communications. We see a truly holistic approach to experience design as the next of those, and so that’s where we’re headed. Join us?

Do you really understand the landscape in which your content exists? The systems, the people, the processes? Creating a content ecosystem map can help you to make sense of it all.

We’ve reached that time of year when we start to receive a flurry of project requests aligned to end of financial year spend. In this post we explore your options and offer advice on making the most of this time and those remaining pockets of budget.

Is your website really supporting future students make the choices that get them to achieve their dreams, or are we making it hard work for them? Robert Perry takes a look at the case and the need for creating powerful subject level pages.

Do you go food shopping without a menu plan? Okay. But would you do the same when it comes to a costly website redevelopment or new CMS purchase? If you’re not developing your content strategy up front, then you’re shopping without a menu.

Is it possible to use minimalist ideas to declutter your digital content and strategy? Our Senior Content Strategist shares how.

If you ask us a question, you might hear us say “well, it depends”. Our Head of Research reflects on why we often need to know more context in order to answer a content strategy question.