Consultancy
If you have specific UX requirements you’d like to discuss with us, please get in touch; we’re happy to offer guidance on next steps, resources and techniques to ensure you’re using UX effectively in your work.
Before you start
Our UX consultancy supports staff across the University of Oxford to design and improve services that work well for their users.
You can come to us at any stage — whether you’re exploring a problem, reviewing something that already exists, or needing quick advice to unblock work. You don’t need a clear brief or UX expertise; part of our role is helping you work out what kind of support will be most useful.
The form below helps us understand your context so we can:
- suggest the right type of UX support
- involve the right people
- make best use of everyone’s time
It should take around 5–10 minutes to complete. If you’re unsure how to answer any question, just share what you know - we’ll take it from there.
How the UX consultancy works
We support projects in a few different ways, depending on what you need and how much support is appropriate at that stage. We’ll help you work out the best approach together - you don’t need to decide this in advance.
At the lightest end, we offer consulting conversations, such as short advice sessions or initial discussions, where we help you think through users, decisions, and next steps. These are quick, advisory, and don’t usually require follow-up work.
For more involved needs, we may offer consulting or guided support over a short period. This can include reviewing work in progress, providing structured feedback, or helping you plan research or design activities. In these cases, the work remains owned and delivered by your team, with us supporting and advising at agreed points.
In some situations, a request may move into delivery, where the UX team would be doing the work itself (for example, producing research plans, running studies, or designing interfaces). This represents a different kind of engagement and would normally require a recharge arrangement.
Occasionally, a request may involve delivery at a scale that goes beyond what the UX team can support directly. In these cases, we’ll talk through alternative options with you, such as reshaping the work, phasing it, or exploring other routes to delivery.
Our aim is always to make sure you get the right kind of support at the right time - and to be clear and transparent about what’s possible.
arrange a consultation
Usability review
We conduct usability reviews to evaluate the user interface and overall user experience of your product. Our expert evaluations identify potential usability issues and provide actionable recommendations for improvement. The primary benefit of a usability review is that it helps to enhance the user experience by making the product more intuitive and user-friendly. It's important to note that a usability review does not replace user research; rather, it complements it. While user research provides insights directly from the users, our usability reviews offer a professional perspective on usability best practices. We are equipped to conduct both usability reviews and support your user research requirements to ensure a comprehensive understanding of your product's usability. For more information and to arrange a usability review, please email sarah.zama@it.ox.ac.uk.
Bespoke training
We are dedicated to supporting our teams by offering training tailored to meet specific challenges. Whether you need help with a particular subject or want to enhance your team's skills, we are here to help. If you have an idea for training or see a demand for a particular topic, please let us know. We are always open to suggestions. For more information please contact sarah.zama@it.ox.ac.uk.
