by Rachel Crookes - Associate Director, Sage Campus
One of my favorite things of working on Campus is getting to work with experts in a range of departments, from Product to Technology, Marketing to User Experience. But sometimes their roles can seem mysterious to an outside view! So I sat down with Lorenzo Milani, a UX Specialist at Sage who I’ve been working with really closely over the last 1-2 years and asked him to talk about what he does at Sage and how he works with the Sage Campus team to help us deliver a better product for learners and implement some of our biggest accessibility improvements to date.
Lorenzo Milani (he/ his/ him)
Associate UX Specialist, User Experience Team, Sage
Tell us about your role at Sage. How do you spend your days?
I'm a UX Specialist in the User Experience Team and I work with many different teams across Sage. My role is about wearing different hats, and other than being a fun fashion statement this also means that my days are varied depending on the needs of other teams.
My first hat is Accessibility, with which I write requirements, conduct testing, and run training sessions on anything related to digital accessibility. I work closely with product managers, UX designers and developers to ensure that accessibility is a key component at every stage of a product process.
My second hat is Analytics. When wearing this one I usually work with product managers in answering their burning analytics questions, usually via Google Analytics or other BI platforms, setting up any analytics data tracking they might need to help them better understand how people interact with our products.
My final hat is the Taxonomy cap, and I wear this when work is needed on platform taxonomies and ontologies. Wearing these different hats means that no two days are the same, and the challenge is making sure I don't lose my identity (and my productivity!) whilst juggling all these different types of work.
How do you work with the Campus team to improve their UX and Accessibility?
I've worked with the Campus Product Managers to improve the accessibility of the Campus platform, and now I'm working closely with the Instructional Designers to do the same with individual courses.
Right now, we're looking at the individual course components such as activities, quizzes and navigational tools and evaluating their accessibility. This evaluation could result in a better component being used in the future, making a smoother experience for all users. We're also reviewing the accessibility of the course content and making sure the language and graphics are more accessible.
We’re deep into the project at the moment, wrangling with specific activity types and finding solutions that will improve the course experience for everyone.
What has been the most challenging aspect of this work so far?
Working with a third-party builder for our courses means that sometimes we don't have as much control over the functionality of a course component as we might do if we’d built it inhouse. Our builder has been great in responding to our accessibility needs, but there are always some limitations. These limits have led us to have to find more creative solutions in some cases and has still resulted in a better and smoother experience overall.
What are you most excited about in the roadmap for Campus?
All the new courses that will be added in the future, and the improved functionality that will come with them.
Tell us something about UX work that might surprise us!
There probably is a perception that UX is all about wireframes and "the right button to use for a checkout screen", but in reality it’s more about being a facilitator. In UX you’re taking the user data and feedback and translating it into something actionable by the product teams and Developers. We're really emphasizing this way of working instead of focusing simply on our product feature deliverables, in order to have a more just and effective UX process.
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