User Experience at Oxford
We believe great user experiences are key to successful digital services and we are here to help you achieve just that.
Designing services that work for people
The University of Oxford delivers hundreds of digital services that support research, teaching and learning, and administration. Our User Experience (UX) Centre of Excellence exists to make those services clearer, more inclusive, and easier to use - for everyone.
We share our approach publicly to support better UX practice across higher education and beyond.
Our inspirations
At Oxford, our work is shaped by established, evidence-based UX and service design practices, including:
- User-centred design - designing with users, not for them
- Service design — understanding end-to-end experiences across teams and systems
- Accessibility and inclusive design - ensuring services work for the widest possible audience
- Evidence-led decision making - using research to reduce assumptions and risk
This is embedded into our ongoing digital transformation.
We aim to align our approach with organisations such as:
- Government Digital Service (GDS)
- NHS digital teams
- Higher education UX communities
- Open design systems and research-led practices
Our focus is always practical: what helps teams make better decisions, earlier.
Our UX principles
These principles guide how we design and evaluate digital services.
- Define the problem first
Identify user problems before designing solutions - You are not the user
Your perspective may be different from users’ experience and needs - Opt for data driven decisions
Make decisions based on evidence and not assumptions - Design with inclusivity in mind
Accessibility and inclusion are not optional or “later” activities. - Use our users’ language
Services should reflect how people think and speak. - Minimise user effort
Make tasks as simple and predictable as possible. - Eliminate ambiguity
Design clear, straightforward interfaces. - Design iteratively
Small research activities reduce large risks.
What we do
We support teams by embedding UX thinking throughout the lifecycle of digital services.
Research
- Planning and running user research
- Choosing appropriate research methods
- Recruiting participants ethically
- Turning insights into action
Design
- Journey mapping and service design
- Prototyping and testing ideas early
- Supporting consistent patterns through design systems
Capability building
- Helping teams build internal UX skills
- Sharing practical guidance, templates, and examples
- Supporting communities of practice
Rather than prescribing a single process, we focus on helping teams to apply the right methods at the right time.
UX resources
We maintain a growing set of open UX resources based on our work across the University, which we are happy to share with others working in or interested in this area.
These include:
- UX through the development lifecycle
- User research toolkits
- Journey mapping guides
- Pain-point analysis
- Design system thinking
- Practical UX principles
This content is intended for:
- UX designers and researchers
- Product and service managers
- Content designers
- Anyone involved in delivering digital services
For more information, email [email protected]
Looking for UX support at Oxford?
If you’re a member of Oxford staff and you’re looking for UX guidance, training, or support for a project, we have dedicated internal services which you can find out more about on OxIntranet, the University-wide intranet: