A student in Philosophy and English Literature is probably not what most people picture when they hear “web governance administrator”. Angelina initially did not picture herself in this role either.  

Two summers ago, after finding an ISG vacancy through Unitemps, she joined the University’s web governance team only expecting a summer job. Recently, she graduated as part of the class of 2026. In this interview, Angelina reflects on how the experience has changed how she sees the IT sector, the value of her humanities degree, and her own career options.  

Q: What is the story of how you joined ISG, and specifically your current role? 

I was looking for a part-time job over the summer when I came across the advert on Unitemps. The role sounded interesting because it covered quite a wide range of things. I would be helping to keep track of the University’s web estate, but there would also be opportunities to work on side projects depending on what the team needed. 

My dad worked in IT, so I guess I had always found the sector intriguing. I just never thought I would have the right skills for it because when people see an IT job, the usual immediate associations are with coding, math and very STEM-based skillsets. None of which I had as a student in Philosophy and Literature. The thing that really caught my attention and prompted me to apply in the end was that the advert specifically stated that they were “NOT JUST looking for Computer Science students.” Indeed, working here for the past two years showed me that there is much more to digital service work than purely technical skills. 

Q: What does your role as a web governance administrator actually involve?  

My main project has been auditing the University’s web estate. The University owns a huge number of websites. Different schools, departments, services and groups might create their own sites, but those websites still need to follow University standards around things like accessibility, editorial content and data protection. Additionally, sometimes a website has been sitting there for ten years, and the person who originally owned it has retired or moved on. If nobody is actively responsible for it, that can become a security and governance risk. 

A lot of my job is thus making sure our records are accurate. We bring together lists from different departments, work out where each website belongs, ensure it fits guidelines and requirements, and track down its owner. If there is no current owner, we contact the department and ask them to appoint someone. In short, our work is looking after the quite important behind-the-scenes structure that a lot of ISG works sit on top of. 

Q: Was the work what you expected when you started?  

Only partly. From what I had heard from previous interns in my position, I thought I would mainly be looking after an existing list of websites. 

My manager, Stratos, wanted us to take a more thorough look at the whole web estate. Thus, we were not just checking that a website appeared on a list. We were asking whether it was under the right department, whether the named owner was still there, and whether there were other University websites that had never been recorded in this comprehensive collection. 

The role expanded quite a lot from what I had imagined. It was more challenging, but that also made it more interesting. I’m always looking for ways to develop new skills, so I enjoyed having work that made me think problem-solve, rather than doing the same administrative task repeatedly. 

Q: Is any part of the job more complicated than people would assume? 

Definitely. Almost every process is more complicated than it looks from the outside. 

One might assume the University already has one perfect, complete list of all its websites. In reality, the web estate is enormous. To build an accurate picture, you have to speak to departments, website owners, suppliers, and different University services. A task that sounds simple can involve a very long chain of communication. 

Last year, for example, we worked on a SharePoint site explaining what people need to know before creating a university website. I initially thought we would simply put the information onto SharePoint and finish it in about a week. That was not the case at all. First, we needed to work out which departments had relevant expertise. Then we had to gather their information, review it with managers, and also make sure the SharePoint site itself was accessible. There are so many stages of checking, reviewing, and going back and forth. 

It made me appreciate how much work happens behind the scenes. As a student, it can be easy to look at a university system and think, “Why isn’t this more organised?” But once I started working from the staff side, I realised how many people and processes are involved in making anything happen. 

Q: Has your background in humanities prepared you for this job in ways people wouldn’t usually expect? 

Yes, especially Philosophy. A lot of what I do academically involves taking an argument apart, identifying gaps in information and thinking about possible criticism. That transferred surprisingly well into the auditing process. My degree taught me critical thinking. I became very good at asking “what if” questions. What if the website owner has retired? What if somebody else has taken over, but the record was never updated? What if a site exists but has not been included in any of our lists? Humanities subjects taught me to consider different possibilities of scenarios, which enabled me to predict potential hurdles and thus prepare solutions in advance or respond accordingly. 

It may sound cliché, but my degree taught me a lot about efficient and effective communication. In Philosophy and Literature tutorials, we constantly discussed ideas, explained our perspectives, and responded to each other’s ideas. It transferred directly to when I lead meetings with suppliers. I can explain why we need something, keep the discussion focused, and emphasize the information points that matter most.  

Q: What surprised you the most about working in digital services? 

How nice everyone is. I thought it would be a very intense environment where everyone knew exactly what they were doing and had strict expectations for you to match their pace. Instead, everyone has been really easy to talk to. 

 The working environment is one of the things I have loved most about the role. My manager Stratos also made it much easier to settle in. When I started, I was slightly overwhelmed by everything I had to learn. He is patient and very good at explaining not only what I needed to do, but why we were doing it. That made the work feel collaborative. It did not feel like I was just being handed tasks. I understood what we were working towards as a team. 

Q: Which part of your internship experience stood out to you the most? 

Aside from my work tasks, I joined the panel that recruited this year’s summer interns. I was involved in reading CVs, shortlisting candidates, conducting interviews, and making final decisions. As someone who had only recently been on the other side of the table, it was really interesting to see what employers actually notice. 

Obviously, your experience and practical skills matter. You need evidence that you can do the job. But being able to communicate and collaborate also makes a big difference. When interviewing you, employers are also imagining what it would be like to work with you. You want them to be able to picture you as part of the team.  

Q: Congratulations on graduating. Looking forward, do you think the internship impacted your future career plans? 

Before this role, I always thought I would probably follow a more typical route that people picture for Literature students, like journalism or teaching. However, my first ideal choice currently would be to continue working in web estate. I would also be interested in other governance or risk-management roles, now that I have experience working in maintenance of a large set of information and containing risks around websites and data. The internship has helped me see past the stereotypes of disciplines and fields, and showed me career paths into a sector that I didn’t even realise were possible. 

Q: What advice would you give to students and new student interns? 

For university students in general, try to expand your scope and get experience outside the classroom as much as possible. One of the experiences that unexpectedly helped me get this role was being Competition Secretary for the University Volleyball team. I was managing the administration of a national-level team, scheduling competitions, booking halls, and arranging transport. It had nothing to do with websites or coding, but it showed that I could organise things, communicate with different parties, and manage a large estate. You never really know which experience will lead you to something else, so keep exploring things while keeping your academic work on track.  

To myself two years ago, and also to all future interns, I would say do not be afraid to ask for more opportunities. I asked whether I could join the recruitment interviews. I asked whether I could be involved in procurement work with external suppliers. Even when you do not have a speaking role, ask for the chance to be in the room, even just to listen in. Sometimes you would have to put yourself forward, because not all opportunities are automatically included in your job description.  

My time at the Forrest Hill office as an Information Resources intern began four weeks ago under Edinburgh’s summer brilliance. Working as a part of the Portal Services team, I am responsible for creating and improving existing information resources about MyEd (the University’s online portal), including editing EdWeb2 pages, producing instructional videos, and refurnishing help and support SharePoints.  

Experiences designing promotional graphics, videos and syllabi for societies and events since high school made me a veteran of CapCut and Canva. It didn’t take me too long to get the gist of less familiar platforms like SharePoint and EdWeb2 (the University’s content management system) either, thanks to the self-paced online training courses. Freshly equipped with all the essential tools, I hit the ground running with high spirits. Like in any independent projects and commissions I did before, my creative visions, personal judgements and the mere intuition of “I like the look” carried me through the planning and proposal stage. I audited the existing EdWeb2 pages about MyEd to propose improvements, planned the refurbishment and new structure of the SharePoints, and storyboarded for the upgrade of the “How to use MyEd” video. Everything progressed beautifully smoothly and swiftly. The big frameworks and ideas were set up and ready to go.  

When “I like the look” starts to fail  

But as they say, the devil’s in the details; mine was waiting right around the corner at the execution stage.  

I was the most ambitious and eager with the upgrade of the “How to use MyEd” video, as it would be my first time creating official video for an organisation rather than for smaller commercial causes. My initial aspiration for upgrading this video was to make it as eye-catching and engaging as the promotional videos made by big companies like Substack: intricate transitions, animations, and rich colours. I wanted it to not only be informative, but charming enough to excite the new students about university life and this new portal system they’re starting it with. I spent nearly a week adapting to the PC version of CapCut, learning new transition techniques, and adjusting the properties of millions of key frames for about the millionth time until the movements are natural and the timings are perfect. With fondness and personal satisfaction towards the visual, I submitted the first draft for review.  

My manager responded:  

“Have you reviewed it with the accessibility checklist?” 

That’s when the design I was so proud of began falling apart like a house of cards. It became clear to me the first time that I’m no longer designing resources for a class of 30, but a community of 53,000+ students within a large institution. “I like the look” hardly stood valid against objective, rational standards like the WCAG (Web Content Accessibility Guidelines) and the University’s editorial guide for effective digital content. The sliding animations I designed turned out to be rather disruptive, as they create moving backgrounds under the text. This compromised the minimal contrast requirement (as text might blur into background) and created more challenges for users with attention or vestibular disorders. After re-reading the WCAG sections on video accessibility, I reduced the speed and frequency of motions on screen, avoided all-caps titles (which troubles users with dyslexia), and carefully checked font size and color contrast section by section.  

Around the same time, I came across Katie’s wonderfully illuminating blog on when videos and images genuinely add value to digital content: 

Videos and images – when do they add value and not just page weight? – Website and Communications Blog 

Although the blog was more about websites, its message inspired me to remove stock footage in my videos, which I previously employed for pure aesthetic reasons to make sections appear less static. Not only did they not add much informational value, but they also increased the video file size and created more moving backgrounds that hinder accessibility.  

Another lesson came through collaboration. Unlike society and event projects where I made every creative decision myself, this video formed part of the Pre-arrivals team’s “How to” series and therefore needed to follow an established visual identity. I will need to adapt the current draft to their prescribed templates, formats and requirements. With the same logic of branding in mind, I also replaced all colors in the video with colors from the University’s official branding palette. This way, in the long term, it could seamlessly fit into university websites, whether uploaded to Media Hopper or embedded into EdWeb pages.  

It would be dishonest to say it wasn’t a little heartbreaking to undo and cut work I had spent hours creating. Nonetheless, I came to understand that information resources differ from creative projects exactly because clarity, effectiveness, and accessibility must always come before visual aesthetics. I began seeing various guidelines and requirements less as constraints. They taught me a more rational and methodical approach to creating information resources than relying solely on the easy intuition and judgement of “I like the look”. Where I designed with my own palate and assumptions before, now I truly began my journey of designing for others. 

But does “I like the look” truly have no merit at all?  

Surprisingly, I would argue that it still does. “I like the look” is not something to unlearn completely, but it should be treated as the beginning rather than the end of the design process. From a different perspective, I have come to think that that instinctive thought is where UX (user experience) thinking begins. 

When I first opened the Notifications Service SharePoint that I was supposed to redesign, my immediate reaction was “I don’t like the look.” Except this time, rather than concluding the thought and jumping straight to redesigning based on personal preference, I attempted to find a rational “Why” by referring to all the guidelines and effective digital content tips I have learnt.  

The SharePoint was comprehensive, containing all the information staff would need to understand what notifications are and how to send different types of notifications. Yet as a first-time user that knows near nothing about the Notifications Service, I found it difficult to know where to begin. The original homepage was filled with large blocks of text and links with equal visual weight regardless of importance; Navigation of all the pages and materials relied heavily on users have prior knowledge on terminologies like “Notifications Template” and “Emergency Notifications”, and there was little visual hierarchy to guide attention or suggest the next step.  

That’s when I realised when users say they “like the look” of a website, they are often responding to not just colours or typography, but how intuitive, organised and effortless it feels to use. I decided not to simply edit the existing pages, but to rebuild the site’s structure in a separate testing environment.  

For instance, instead of letting the homepage act as a page of plain text, I plan to make it a clearer starting point for all types of users. I intend to include an image of Notifications Backbone (the system used to send notifications) alongside a direct button to access it. This way, experienced staff can access the system immediately, while first-time users are given some introductory visual and textual context before they continue exploring the site. The content changes minimally; my focus is to reorganise them around users’ journeys. Similarly, rather than presenting users with a long list of pages whose titles assume prior knowledge of relevant terminologies, I plan to reorganise the content into a small number of category cards based on what potential tasks users are trying to accomplish. I also hope to introduce a clearer hierarchy within the navigation menu, so that related pages are grouped more logically, and any information can be found more intuitively.   

Original homepage  v.s. New draft hompage 

Original information list  v.s. New draft categorisation  

New draft menu bar  

Being a student unexpectedly became an advantage in this process. Since I had similarly little prior knowledge of the Notifications Service as a new user, every point where I became confused while visiting the original SharePoint highlighted somewhere a common struggle might occur. Looking at the site with fresh eyes helped me identify problems that familiarity can sometimes hide. 

From “I like it” towards “We like it”  

But of course, just as I learnt with the review of the MyEd video draft, the work does not end once I think the design “looks right”. Everything I design  – SharePoint, websites, and videos – still need to be checked against the accessibility standards, follow editorial and branding guidelines, and most importantly, be tested with the people it is actually designed for (e.g. test MyEd video with students, the Notifications SharePoint with staff). Nick’s excellent guide on running usability tests has been particularly helpful in shaping how I plan to continue with the next steps.  

How to run a usability test – Website and Communications Blog 

“I like/dislike the look” has carried me through countless creative projects before. Four weeks later, I don’t think that instinct has been unlearnt but simply found its proper place. Rather than a justification for me to blindly follow personal preference and biased judgements, it has become the starting point for me to ask better questions about accessibility, usability, and the needs of the people I’m designing for. That is the perspective I’ll continue carrying into MyEd information resource that I will continue to create and develop throughout the rest of the internship.