KNOWSLEY INFORMATION SERVICE
Project Brief.
Knowsley Council needed to improve the web pages of its Family Information Service and Directory. This included implementing features in support of requirements set out in the Children and Families Bill (2013; implemented in 2014) such as setting out a comprehensive ‘Local Offer’ and providing all relevant information for its target audience in one place. WPP partners JDi Solutions and Artychoke proposed a Drupal-based solution for use by non-technical staff.
The design of the user interface of the website was developed with a number of stakeholder groups including children, young adults, parents and care agencies. Their input and preferences as to what kind of user experience they wanted were gathered through a series of Focus Group meetings hosted by Artychoke and Knowsley staff. The website was designed and developed to cater for people of different age ranges and abilities and to provide them with features and functions implemented in a simple but consistent way to “help them to help themselves”. The Knowsley staff maintaining the website and managing its content via the CMS are not part of the corporate web team and had previously never received any formal training in the use of a CMS, let alone Drupal. This presented a number of challenges in how their instance of Drupal should be configured as the need to maintain regular updates to the Directory was paramount.
JDi Solutions were able to configure a simple but powerful CMS for the website using a custom-built instance of Drupal based on the Panopoly distribution. This distribution simplifies many aspects of Drupal and creates a CMS that is more user-friendly for users unfamiliar with content management while retaining the types of features and functions Local Authorities find indispensible.
Key project features
- specialist website for specific target audience
- features and content needed to meet statutory guidelines
- focus groups used to to help determine design and desired user experience
- simplified CMS created in Drupal for use by non-technical staff