We are excited to announce that we have been commissioned by the UK’s leading water research organisation, UKWIR Ltd., to continue the website upgrade work that was commenced at the beginning of 2019.  Back then we were asked to provide a graphical re-design, to improve the presentation of UKWIR together with improved access to UKWIRs body of research work.  This was completed on time and under budget – and was widely applauded for improved service.

Our Project Manager, Luisa Cross – “This second phase of work is much more challenging, focussing on usability and the purposefulness of the services UKWIR provides to its members, staff and contractors.

In its previous version, the website provided masses of functionality for the key stakeholders.  Using the XPOR platform we developed this quickly and relatively easily.  Testing was focussed on confirming the services the site provided successfully achieved their requirements.

However, user uptake was not so successful! - we had overlooked the infrequency with which the services were to be used by stakeholders.  For example, a Project Manager may only use the site two or three times a year, meaning they needed “intuitiveness” at the top of their requirements list.  Whilst we were proud of the flexibility we were providing to users, they only wanted to be precisely guided through the tasks they had to perform.

So, in this second phase of work, we are introducing a “wizard-based” method for interacting with the website.  This type of interaction is used by other systems, such as most government online submission processes.

The great thing about developing the solution with XPOR is that we can rapidly change how things work, once we receive responses and requests from the clients users."

The work is currently in hand, accompanied with various research programme changes and other innovative developments on the site.