Delivered

Here's what we delivered in Q1 of 2023.

Rotating the awards in the site footer

To show the various accolades awarded to the University, we have set up an automatic 'rotation' for the awards in the site footer, meaning we can display different awards at different times.

We came up with the following schedule:

The awards in the footer are now following this schedule, changing automatically on a fortnightly basis.

Improved footnote functionality

With the improved footnote functionality, we now have anchor links between a footnote and the place in the text the footnote reference appears. Having these anchor links makes it easy for the users to find the footnote and then return to the place in the text they were reading.

The Typecase guide page about the Footnote component explains how to use the Footnote component to reference research and marketing claims or add small print to a page on the University website.

Improved method of updating certain pages

Some pages, such as Professional services and Offices used to require developers to be updated. The content team needed access to edit the pages quickly without relying on the developers, so we've created an interface that allows them to update these pages directly.

Typical programme length ranges on doctoral programme pages

For more flexible doctoral programmes, it is now possible to specify a range for the typical programme length rather than having to enter a fixed period.

Case study dropdown box in Typecase for Courses

It used to be challenging to find an appropriate case study to link to a course because the search functionality of the case study dropdown box only allowed you to search by the name of the student rather than information related to the course.

Now it is possible to search by the student's course and year of graduation, providing much more relevant results.

Accessibility

We found that the hover state on the buttons on our School of Management content did not have sufficient colour contrast. It included CTAs, extended navigation, footer links and card titles where there is a colour gradient. Lack of contrast meant that content failed WCAG success criterion 1.4.3 Contrast (minimum): Elements must have sufficient colour contrast.

We've updated some of the colours used on School of Management pages to increase the visual contrast and make sure we meet accessibility regulations.

Ongoing

Here's what we've been working on in Q1 of 2023.

Floating in-page navigation

Some pages on our website, such as course pages, can be hard to navigate due to their length. These pages have in-page navigation components, showing links to different page sections. The problem is that this in-page navigation is fixed at the top of the page, requiring visitors to scroll all the way back to the top to see it.

Enter the floating in-page navigation! By making the in-page navigation sticky, floating on the left side while the visitor scrolls down the page, the visitor can always see where they are on the page and quickly navigate to other relevant sections.

We think this functionality will significantly improve the user experience on course pages and other lengthy pages.

Corporate information iteration

We are improving the Corporate Information content type as part of our work to bring all content types into the Lens design system. It will adopt the Lens design system and will feature components similar to those available for Guide pages.