Rise Innovation Project
User Experience (UX)
Interface Design (UI)
Web Development
CMS Integration
Helping local businesses take charge of their innovation, capitalise on new opportunities and become more productive and competitive.
The University of Brighton and University of Sussex, initiated the RISE project to offer free business innovation support to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) based in West Sussex. We were tasked with developing a platform that enabled business owners to easily connect with each other and access the information needed for innovation and growth.
Discovery & Research
We kicked off the project with an ideation session by examining the aims and objectives of our client, existing competitors, the target market and current trends. Additionally, we channeled our focus to understanding the interests of potential users to understand their pain points, how they would use the platform, and what they would use the platform for.
User Interface Design
One of the major goals of the RISE project was to take voluminous data and break it down into chunks for website users to understand the information easily. To implement RISE’s objectives, our design team developed website screens for each piece of data using a collaborative interface design tool known as Figma. This tool simplified our real-time design process and enabled the smooth transition of designed screens to implementation on the website. Figma is vital to creating project designs as it aids the planning, execution, Wire framing, and Prototyping stages of achieving desirable and scalable user-interface designs.
WordPress development
The entire website was built using the PHP stack on the WordPress CMS as requested by the client. We converted static pre-designed HTML templates to WordPress to create a search engine optimised (SEO) and responsive website. The platform is split into 3 areas:
The public section for all users
The member area for businesses
The admin area, for the University of Brighton team.
Wordpress Development
The member area is split into 3 sections that offer a wide range of features and opportunities;
Connect
Develop
MyLocker
The member area and powerful search engine are powered by the Ultimate Member plugin. We integrated plugins like bbPress to power the forum part of the member area and user Insights to give the site admin access to detailed analytics and usage data.
We adopted a phased-out strategy due to a tight timeframe, which allowed us to develop the main website first. Following that, we added the directory and messaging features. The last phase demanded that we create sections for resources, opportunities, and learning modules.