9 sites transformed into one for UK Research and Innovation

UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) is the umbrella organisation for 9 funding councils.

Each council had its own website, organised in its own way, with different topics and depth and breadth of content.

It was hard for applicants to match their interests with grants on offer. And hard to know how to make a winning application and manage the award once you’d got it.

Councils wanted fewer, better targeted applications.

This content transformation project aimed to meet user needs by bringing all that diverse structure and content into one harmonised site.

A bunch of content designers worked on the project through Scroll - a leading provider of us types. I buddied up with content designer Duncan Bloor and user researcher Monica Ferraro to transition ‘guidance for applicants’ and ‘funding decisions and data’ (FDAD) content. (I was also in another combo that transitioned and created a style for ‘funding success stories’.)

Here’s an outline of what we did on funding decisions and data.

Visualising a slab of URLs

Funny how spreadsheets figure so much in content design. Kate Lin at UKRI had done a rough cut of URLs from the 9 sites. Learning from our experience on ‘guidance for applicants’, we first talked with stakeholders from each council to double check the list. This saved time looking at redundant content or missing pockets of pages not in the rough cut.

We mapped out the URLs for each council, noting page traffic, numbers of linked documents and possible additions to the FDAD fold. Content themes emerged and we noted them on the maps. We also noted the different terminology used across council content.

Each council also produces spreadsheets of their funding decisions. I analysed these, identified data points and ranked how common they were across councils. The aim was to produce a template to suit all councils.

Understanding business needs

We kept in touch with UKRI subject matter experts (SMEs) as we learned about the content. Monica, the user researcher, held discovery workshops with the SMEs. Duncan and I also had chats with councils about their content operations. We found out less than we thought we would, so we proposed sending out a survey.

Creating a prototype for user testing

Monica carried out discovery research with external users. I threw our collective, nascent understanding of content and users into the air and produced a prototype for more testing.

Report and conceptual model

We collated our activity, observations and recommend approach into a report. This included a couple of conceptual models of mine that showed how users could get to content.

UKRI approved our approach. I iterated the prototype to reflect user and business needs. We did some more research around where to place the content in the site and what to name it.

Getting the content together for publish

We drafted the content and got it signed off. We worked with the developer to get it into the site. That harmonised data template ended up out of scope and was saved for another day.

Then it was onto those ‘success stories’. From one success story to another, if you like.