The new website of the Department of Biochemistry is now live
In the past weeks the new Departmental website has come to life. This achievement was driven by Lidia Vasilieva, Alfredo Castello, Chris Manning, Julian Jordan, Jeremy Rowntree and Francis Barr; who worked closely with other members of the Department and with One Ltd. The new website aimed to capture not only the essence of our research, but also that of our vibrant community.
From Left to Right: Francis Barr, Jeremy Rowntree, Alfredo Castello, Lidia Vasilieva and Julian Jordan
The website project set sail in 2017 and arrived to port in 2019. Our goal was to generate a modern, clean and easy to navigate website that would reflect the cutting edge nature of our research and the diversity and collegiality of our community. We also wanted to make accessible our science and teaching to a broad audience, ranging from lay public, funders, undergraduate and graduate students to more experienced researchers. To meet these needs, the ‘discovery phase’ started by interviewing individuals from all these audience groups and learning about their needs when visiting our website. This was followed by a ‘development phase’, in which our starting goals and everything we learned from the interviews were used to instruct the website architecture, image and content. The ‘development phase’ led to the ‘implementation phase’ in which the design became real and the site was populated with the content and pictures. Dozens of Biochemistry staff volunteered for the photographic sessions, which had the goal to capture our community in ‘action’. We are very grateful to all participants! The ‘implementation phase’ didn’t end with the launching of the website as we plan to add new functionalities and sections in the coming months. Phase 2, which starts now, will improve the navigation experience and the content display using the ‘tagging’ tools to interconnect the information.
It has been an exciting journey in which we have met many interesting people and have learned every day a new thing; from organising a large scale photo-shooting session to the process of developing a new ‘tone of voice’. We hope you enjoy the new website as much as we enjoyed building it.
Alfredo Castello
1st April 2019
