OakExtra

The OakExtra team were having difficulties managing and maintaining the content of their current website and found that the site didn’t really deliver on the goals they required. Following a research and discovery phase, I designed a website that brought together the various aspects of student life into a single manageable system, creating a site that structured the information so as to give the best possible user experience. The backend provides custom tools designed to meet the requirements of the OakExtra team, from events management and student services to an information repository and news/blog section. The site also provides access to specific services for students accessing the site on campus and makes certain features only available to users accessing the site off campus.

The OakExtra team wanted a site that would appeal to students, grabbing their attention, so a clean, vibrant theme was designed, making use of flat colours, imagery and white space to draw users attention. It was important that the team could add new student services, so a flexible design was developed that could expand. It was also important that specific events and news items could be highlighted to students, so custom carousel module was developed to promote these items on the home screen. The team were also keen on integrating the imagery and posts from their Instagram account, so their Instagram feed was instigated into the home page.

The site was uploaded to staging server where the team were able to test the functionality and provide feedback before eventually being deployed to a newly provisioned Ubuntu server running securely on Apache.