Weeknotes, 12 Mar
Updates Design Content Planning Build Test
Phew! It has been a long time since I last wrote a general update on how we’ve been getting on. With a few team members furloughed because of the UK-wide lockdown, it has been slow progress, but this week we have really picked up the pace!
CMS work has started!
It’s early days yet and Marie and Alan have mostly been arranging the hosting environment and planning deployment scripts with W3C. Expect things to speed up as Marie gets into the swing of things and churns out content types.
Testing has started
Initial browser and device testing was completed this week, with only four minor issues found. Accessibility testing is due to start in the next two weeks. We are looking forward to finding out where we can improve.
TR listing page
The spec for this page was agreed a few weeks ago. This week we finally finished the UI design for it too. It has been sent over to W3C for comments and we will be sharing it soon on this site. This is such an important set of content for W3C and users, we have really taken our time to get it right.
Group pages
We know from the W3C team that there are specific problems with the current Group pages on the site. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time in the project to do a full redesign of these pages. Instead we focussed on reviewing the existing content and issues and identifying where we could design components that will improve usability. Three areas have been agreed for design:
- Secondary navigation at the top of the page
- Group listing cards
- Call-to-action buttons colour variations (positive, negative, neutral)
The UI design for these will take place next week.
Homepage content
We have proposed content, for the site homepage, for the W3C team to review. We are aiming to get this signed-off in the next few days so it can go into design soon.
Remaining design work
There are a few other bits and pieces we are also working, on with the aim of getting all design work completed this month.
- A new component for the business ecosystem page, to display related W3C groups
- Full design review of the static templates
- Identifying if there are any components needed to be designed for the account and login pages
Final thoughts
What was good: it feels after a long time of moving slowly, we are back together as a team. It is invigorating.
What we found challenging: at this stage of a project there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of. JIRA is our friend in this case, every little task or action is defined and prioritised here.
What are we looking forward to: finalising designs and specs, so we move fully into the build phase!