University of Arts Global Business Website

Background

University of the Arts London is one of the world's leading specialist centres for art, design, fashion, communication and the performing arts. It has an unrivalled base of creative knowledge and expertise available to business, not just creative businesses but all businesses.
Through its six internationally famous Colleges the University supports business development in companies of all sizes and types, from new business start-ups to SMEs to global corporations internationally.

Brief

The University of the Arts London approached Peter Karas to develop a new digital portal named 'UAL Global Business' intended to be a standalone gateway for all the commercial services available within the university, from training to consultancy.
UAL Global Business showcases and promotes the wide range of commercial activities available to an international business audience. The Design Laboratory, UALs' design consultancy designed a basic corporate Identity for UAL International, and then worked with Peter Karas to develop a web portal that is easily up-datable by the different commercial organisations across the university.

Approach

The Design Laboratory at Central St. Martins produced the initial information and graphic design and created a developers brief. An initial meeting was held and key deliverables and dates established. These included:

• A functional specification,defining requirements, system roles and an information model. This document ensured that there was a common understanding of business requirements of UAL and how they translated into system functionality.
• A technical specification, defining and explaining choice of content management system (CMS) and implementation details for the finished system.
• A project plan, with Key delivery dates for 4 interim deliveries.
• A system test specification, defining tests to ensure the site has been built according to the brief and the functional specification.
• An installation guide, explaining how the system should be configured and installed.
• Help Guide, explaining to the end users how to use the system
• Training, supporting specific members of staff in the handover of system Admin

Simplicity in usability and technical design was key to the project. Drupal was chosen as the CMS due to its stability and ability to grow with a large organisations needs. Core Drupal modules were used and integrated to provide a simple but effective design, which would scale well as more content was added.

Key website features

• Ability for 130 organisations across the university to logon and edit discreet areas of the website.
• Easy to upload and manage Content
• Multiple ways to navigate information; Menus, Key word search, filter
• Image galleries for portfolios
• Standard templates for page creation
• News Postings
• A UALAdmin role to manage accounts and organisations content

Testimonial

On completion of the Project, Chris Joscelyne, Design Laboratory Account Manager said:

"I would not hesitate to recommend Pete for anyone looking to get a great looking website built on time and on budget. The UAL Global Business portal was a complex and challenging project with a very tight deadline but Pete was never less than cool, calm and collected. His ability to understand and apply our designs was invaluable in a project like this where maintaining the identity of a large institution such as the University of the Arts is paramount and has resulted in a finished site that is incredibly faithful to the original concept. However, beyond the surface level shine of a great looking website, it is Pete's approach to his business that really impresses. From start to finish his organization of the project has been impeccable, from the initial breakdown of exactly how the project would proceed to the weekly progress updates and the final testing and installation documents, the whole process was amazingly stress free and enjoyable. I very much hope that I will have the pleasure of working with Pete again in the future."