Project:
The goal is to build a digital platform to enable people in all corners of the country and from all walks of life to research and publish their heritage, to find out what it is that informs their ‘sense of place’. We also believe that heritage has a positive social, economic and cultural role to play in our diverse communities in 21st century Britain. Funded by HEFCE, and the Higher Education Innovation Fund, we bring together a team of heritage professionals and people with a passion for heritage.
The website will act both as a platform for pedagogic and didactic materials and toolkits, and will provide a forum and venue for hosting digital heritage projects drawn from a wide range of partners. Working closely initially with schools in Tower Hamlets, we are seeking to broaden our scope of operations. Working in partnership with the Edge Foundation we aim additionally to help schools develop creative approaches to learning about tangible and intangible cultural heritage, with the aim of positively impacting upon pupils’ skill sets. It is not just schools and colleges where we are focusing; our goal is to knit together disparate approaches to community heritage, working from the bottom up, talking to people and trying to understand what they need as opposed to working from the top down.
Process:
I was the designer on the project King's Digital Lab, working closely together with a developer, analyst and project partners. Data protection and collection research was also important to consider. User testing for the submission form was requested but there wasn't much time so I devised a bit of a hack that the partners could print out give to their students, who would take a photo on their phones, fill in the form, a photo of the phone and the form would be taken and all sent to me to review. This worked very well and I changed a some minor things based on the results. After working on the wireframes, I prototyped the base framework to test responsiveness and interactions, then continued working on it, styling it up on the staging server alongside a developer who added the functionality and other aspects to produce the final website.
