Interview two:

Andries Bester: Marketing development lead, GetSmarter. 18 September 2018 GetSmarter (2U) is an edutech company developing online short courses for leading international universities.

Andries has studied socio-informatics and has a background in web development before the position of development lead in the marketing department was created for him at GetSmarter.

The role of mobile at an edutech company

The communication platforms in this organisation include: corporate marketing website, blogs, mobi-sites, social media, email marketing and the student online learning centre. The mobile sites are built with responsive design, using programmes such as Bootstrap, which is considered one of the world’s best responsive

programming frameworks for mobile friendly design. There are no specific mobile applications at GetSmarter, but the mobile content and navigational elements are adapted to work in an “appy” way. For example, the blog was rebuilt with different code in “Media Query” in CSS3 to adapt the size of the text. Three form fields with filters for search queries appear underneath each other, for example, “search by category, search by subject or search by date”. On the desktop design, these fields appear side by side. The search bars are wrapped into an element that floats to the top and shrinks into an icon to save space on the screen. The user psychology behind this design decision is that users will know how they want to choose their content and are likely to make the correct choice the first time, so it isn’t necessary for the search options to stay on the screen. The icon would read as “explore tool”, however, it was acknowledged that ideal wording in contexts such as this are not always properly resolved as there isn’t a dedicated UX writer involved in the team.

Content is created on blog posts for the company, which is optimised with key words to be found by search engines. The challenge with mobile apps is that the content cannot be crawled by Google, as the content isn’t refreshed. There is a programme called AJAX that allows crawlable content to be refreshed. Andries suggested that a “Model View Controller” (MVC) can be utilised to create a different front-end “view” but the backend architecture is separated so the content can be crawled by Google.

The role of UX in the company

There are two core UX functions at GetSmarter, in the OLC (Online Learning Centre) and in marketing communication. However, Andries considers UX to be an umbrella term that should be an over-arching, user-focused approach that reaches into every

department in the company. The UX specialist should be responsible for research to ensure the work aligns with the business needs and the developers are given

accurate models and specs. The term UX is a very intangible and opinion-driven field that is perception focused and comprises non-tactile elements. The term adopted by 2U is “conversion rate optimisation strategy” which helps to add an element of science and measurability to UX by creating tools that are specifically for optimising. For example, the tool “hijacks” a page before it gets served to the user. The page can be used for specific research and testing purposes allowing for more data-driven design decisions. There are many other measurement tools, such as Google

Analytics for measuring factors such as bounce rates and session times. Other programmes are available to measure the user behaviour associated with specific “events” such as the clicks on “Add to Cart”.

Role of writer in the process – current and ideal

The writer should be involved at the conceptual stage, but mostly isn’t. The Business Systems Analyst (BSA) decides on the needs of the business and objectives of the product. The BSA works with the UX specialist to plan the user flow and predict the scenario of each potential journey. This thinking is transformed into a wireframe with a mock-up in Balsimiq, and then Invision gives it a live prototype feel with clickable wireframes that the user can navigate as if actually in the site. At this stage the coding specialists are given the framework and preferably further changes won’t be made. Andries suggested the need for a UX analyst who works with a UX designer: someone who thinks from a data driven perspective working with the front-end designer.

What skills does the writer need?

Other than obvious writing skills, it would be invaluable for the writer to have a high- level view of the project to understand how the systems work together. The writer should have a broad UX thinking approach and predict how the user is likely to behave for each possible scenario. The writer should also know how code fits into the picture and understand the jargon to be able to communicate this information between departments. In the South African economy, it isn’t feasible for a writer to only work on UX as it is too specialised. Most South African companies require the writer to have a broader range of writing skills as well as an understanding of how systems work.