Text: Marianne Fuglsang Welling Farsinsen, ITS Photo: AAU 

Until now, researchers have typically encountered a patchwork of different AAU websites, each trying their best to present relevant information. The challenge was that these websites contained information for several different target groups, and as a researcher, you would often have to spend a lot of time jumping around on different websites to find the necessary information. Tanja Svarre, Associate Professor at the Department of Communication and Psychology and project participant in the development of researcher.aau.dk, explains:

- "Many existing websites at AAU were built based on who was the sender of the information. For example, both the Finance and Accounts Department, Grants & Contracts and ITS had separate websites, each of which had sections aimed at researchers. But it challenged the information search that researchers had to think about who the sender was of the information they needed. Therefore, the goal of the new website is to present a single point of entry to all this information so that researchers can easily find it by only starting in one place, on one website, says Tanja Svarre, who contributes to the project both with professional expertise and as a representative of the researchers.

The project stems from a decision by AAU's Digitalisation Committee, and the Research Unit under Digitalisation and Transformation in ITS handles the project management. The www.researcher.aau.dk project includes the units that contribute with relevant information to the new website. These include AUB, Research Services, EAC, Innovation and ITS. All development of the site also takes place in collaboration with ITS' UX team, who are the experts in ensuring a good user experience on AAU's websites. The project has also involved the researchers directly, where especially need assessment at workshops in the research environments has highlighted a need to improve the researchers' opportunities to search for relevant AAU information and material on the internet. Anders Krogh, project manager at the research unit under Digitalisation and Transformation in ITS, explains:

- The work with workshops and researcher involvement has been aimed at ensuring that researchers see value in the fact that they only have to go to one place to get the right information. The collection of information on one website will also provide a basis for creating better and more aligned content regardless of the sender. We already see that the website strengthens coordination, knowledge sharing and collaboration across the units that produce content for the website, because all parties involved have a common goal and a common commitment: to create relevant content for researchers that is updated and presented in the best possible way. We therefore see positive gains both in relation to the target group of researchers who will use the website, but also in relation to the collaborating units, which must ensure the quality of the content and will have better opportunities for this in the future, Anders Krogh concludes.

The new website went live in July and will be continuously expanded and adjusted as it is put into use, receives feedback and possibly clarifies more needs and wishes from researchers.

Stay tuned at www.researcher.aau.dk