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School of Social and Political Science Website

School of Social and Political Science templates
Date
January 2020 - November 2020
URL
https://www.sps.ed.ac.uk/
Status
Live
Role
UI Designer & Solutions Developer
Technologies
Context
The previous SPS website became over the years a dated website from a look and feel perspective. It was also obsolete from a technical point of view since it was built with a non-standard CMS that was about to lost support and security updates.
It ended up being not fit for purpose because its content was not easy to be accessed by the university’s ecosystem and vast audience (prospective students and families, current students, staff, etc). All of these users were clearly struggling trying to find relevant information that ended up unreachable because of a lack of information architecture.
The old SPS website.
The old SPS website.
The new SPS website.
The new SPS website.
Requirements
  • The overall aim of the new website is to provide a platform to engage different target audiences around two main areas – student recruitment and research activities, allowing them to find what they need, where they expect to find it.
  • A scalable platform that allows to centrally manage and control the brand while giving content independence to each department.
  • A platform that allows a large volume of users who may need to edit content on the website at the same time. 
  • A platform for non-technical users, including a WYSIWYG for code-free content editing, media libraries, drag & drop, and roll back to previous version.
  • A platform that offers publishing processes and governance workflows to ensure content accessibility, accuracy, and consistency.
  • A platform that allows owners and content editors flexibility and creativity building pages whilst keeping consistency by using UI components inline with their brand and style guide instead of rigid templates.
The SPS landing page on edit mode.
The SPS landing page on edit mode.
Responsibilities
  • I implemented a continuous delivery process with Ansible pipelines that enables controlled, quick and efficient deployment of new features every week.
  • I built the front-end architecture based on Twig template engine, Pattern Lab, SASS and npm scripts.
  • I built content types and matching templates based on Communications & Engadgement Team requirements: news, events, subject area, staff profile. I also built individual components (carousel, featured list, Jumbotron, cards, tabs and accordion) used to build the main landing page by the Communications & Engagement Team, and to enhance the rest of the templates where appropiate.
  • I adapted the look and feel of Edinburgh Law School website to our own needs.
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