How The New Editorial Guidelines Website Was Built
It's gone through all the checks, and all the boxes have been ticked (as you would expect given the subject matter), the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Editorial Guidelines website is live and ready to use. All new, all fresh, and all you need to know if you create content for Ö÷²¥´óÐã TV, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Radio, Ö÷²¥´óÐã Online or anywhere else.
I'm Paul Goodenough and my company were commissioned by Ö÷²¥´óÐã Editorial Policy to build the new website.
The process from concept to build has certainly been a task and a half. Due to the shifting sands surrounding developing in the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Forge environment and the earlier, more formal, iteration of GVL3/GEL, many of our initial suggestions and plans were significantly reduced or even cancelled. There's been a massive push in Ö÷²¥´óÐã Online to avoid replication and the repeated development of similar applications - a thought process we fully throw our weight behind. However, inevitably that sometimes meant that we couldn't develop bespoke solutions of our own.
Here's the key new functionality on the Editorial Guidelines website:
Mini Guides: A user controlled listing/grouping of related Guidelines and Guidance relating to areas of interest to their production. An example of a Mini Guide might be 'Secret Filming Guidelines'
Mark as Read: This allows users to mark a piece of Guidance or a Guideline as 'read'. This 'read' list would then appear in their Personal Space - allowing them to see what they have read and quickly and easily refer back to it.
As a group (ourselves at aerian studios and the Editorial Policy team) we decided the best choice for a content management system (CMS) was the Ö÷²¥´óÐã Online Technology Group's iSite, which is based on . The integration and use of iSite offered its own solutions and issues as it was in development during the project, however due to our experiences with both Alfresco and other XML based CMS systems, it was a relatively painless transition for us, and the end result is one that we're very pleased with. Stephen Elson and the iSite team have much to be proud of for their work.
Limited access to a genuine based data store for this project turned out to be an even bigger issue than we first thought, particularly since the primary data source (Electron, which is based on and - is read only to PAL applications. As a workaround, KeyValueStore is used as a user preference data store for concepts such as 'read articles' and 'mini guides', and whilst this has ultimately proved successful, the data sharding that resulted presented some significant issues relating to cross referencing data from the two sources. Much like trying to use a wellington boot to keep the rain off your head - ultimately successful, but uncomfortable.
As we quickly learned, the Editorial Guidelines website has to be an authoritative source for content producers looking to get to grips with the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's Values and Standards. So any social aspects of the site needed to be handled very carefully and decisions were made to reduce scope for allowing users to control which parts of the site were promoted. For example mini guides are a key feature, but are shared privately rather than publically indexed on the site.
We worked closely with the Editorial Policy team to create solutions and to prioritise the tasks involved, and through this close and pragmatic approach by Editorial Policy, we've managed to keep the key areas of functionality that help to bring the website in line with the functionality and professionalism one might associate with a Ö÷²¥´óÐã Online website.
In particular, the big victories for us have been the Mini Guides and the Mark as Read mini-applications, as we believe they help short cut a lot of the research around navigating the Guidelines. We intended to try and remove the label of the Guidelines being a very strict and formal affair and add an element of fun. We didn't quite achieve this as the earlier iterations of GVL3/GEL which we worked within for this project were more constrictive than the newer iterations. You can see how the newer iterations play out in some of the more recent Ö÷²¥´óÐã projects we've worked on such as Sam and Mark's TMi Friday and Live n Deadly.
But these are just nuances of design and the website remains a massive improvement in look and functionality and a fantastic resource for anyone in the business of creating content for the Ö÷²¥´óÐã. We're also incredibly grateful to all of the Editorial Policy team who have been fantastic and a joy to work with.
Paul Goodenough is Head of User Experience and Design/Managing Director aerian studios
Comment number 1.
At 15th Oct 2010, jr4412 wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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Comment number 2.
At 15th Oct 2010, Paul Robert Lloyd wrote:Hi Paul,
This is a lovely looking update to the site, although it sounds like it involved a lot of compromise!
I'd love learn more about how the GEL/GVL3 guidelines hindered the design process, and perhaps where they helped too. I'm immensely fascinated by the GEL project, the introduction of a single visual language document, and the complexities involved when implementing such a project in an organisation as large as the Ö÷²¥´óÐã.
As a design agency external to the Ö÷²¥´óÐã, how did you incorporate these guidelines into your own deign process—what have you learnt from this project, and how would you perhaps work differently next time?
Regards,
Paul
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Comment number 3.
At 15th Oct 2010, Nick Reynolds wrote:Hi - this post is about the building of the new Guidelines website not the content of the Guidelines themselves or the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's approach to impartiality. To comment about those please go here.
Thanks
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Comment number 4.
At 18th Oct 2010, Paul Goodenough wrote:Hi Paul
GVL3 / GEL is, for us at least, a very definite step in the right direction. Not only does it minimise replication of design and development work, but it creates a Ö÷²¥´óÐã design pattern framework that is immediately recognisable (I for one have noticed many sites looking decidedly GEL’esque).
The reason it hindered us was mainly due to timing. As with most things that are new, there’s a massive impetus to stick to the rules very rigidly. As more projects have pushed right against the barriers of these, the framework has allowed for some ‘give’ which means that newer projects can benefit from this. An example is that we were told that we could in no way create new iconography or use background imagery or gradients on our project. However, on more recent projects elements such as this are becoming more common place.
In regards to how we use these in our own design processes, the answer its – quite easily. We have used a design pattern for all our non-Ö÷²¥´óÐã work for some time, so we already had template PSD’s set up to fit with predefined horizontal and vertical grids – so we were lucky that altering these to fit GEL didn’t take a long time. We’ve also worked within many frameworks and grids with our various partners. Certainly I would say there has been inspiration from Ö÷²¥´óÐã’s approach, often via our other customers who have witnessed GEL for themselves and seen our Ö÷²¥´óÐã design work and wanted to be inspired through this – and like most things, our job is to try to help them blaze their own path rather than treading a crowded one.
All the best
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Comment number 5.
At 21st Oct 2010, ismail wrote:This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.
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