Since our last blog (view here), there has been tremendous progress toward delivering our Digital Skills Portal.
As our last blog concluded, we were beginning to receive the feedback from our dedicated User Acceptance Group and working up some wireframes. A website wireframe is a simplified visual plan that outlines the layout and structure of a web page, omitting design details to guide the design process.
This helped accelerate discussion around how all the core elements of content will work together to provide users with easy access to the resources they need most.
As well as that, it's helped the design team come up with attractive design elements that are accessible and responsive to the device it's being viewed on.
A portal with a purpose
This Portal is designed to showcase how digital technology and new ways of working could add value to how planners work. A big part of this has been to develop a Digital Skills Handbook.
While working up the portal design, the idea of a handbook has been a consistent part of the site map. The Digital Skills Handbook will tell you the smartest and most effective ways to apply digital skills and tools in town planning. The aim would be to gather industry wisdom to make it easier for our users to make good choices and be successful. It would also help:
- Ensure that planners have a basic understanding of digital and how it can relate to planning.
- Consider the inclusion of designing, developing, and populating an easy-to-read, non-technical online book which pulls together background, rationale, and operational details that set out the different digital skills required by different planning "actors."
Kicking off the development of the Digital Skills Handbook
We've made significant progress with developing the Digital Skills Portal. We will apply the same approach and expertise to the technical development of the Handbook but with the addition of one other fundamental component – a subject matter expert to curate and develop content that will engage and support the development of digital skills in our users.
We are pleased to advise that the subject matter and content will be provided by planning consultants LASplanning LLP. They are a team with considerable experience in spatial planning, including Development Planning and Development Management spheres. LASplanning LLP hold strong working relationships across the public and private sector. They have invaluable experience in representing a range of clients including minority groups such as the Gypsy/Traveller community.
We are confident that their identification of relevant digital tools will place us in good stead for the development of the Handbook and Portal. Close working is already underway between LASplanning LLP, the Digital Skills Portal design team and, Perago. We look forward to sharing outputs of this as the content and site come together.
Once we go live, you will be able to view the handbook on the Digital Skills Portal.
We aim to make it user-friendly and easy to navigate using a clear category structure. We're also considering various media types like images, videos, and audio files to make your content engaging. We will extend the search function, so we're making sure it's efficient. Plus, admins can add extra keywords to help improve the search results.
Stay tuned for updates on this project – the great news is that we're using the same team to deliver this across Perago, RTPI and the Scottish Government, so we're hitting the group running.
Next steps
- We're looking forward to developing our content plan with LASplanning LLP.
- We will incorporate the new and exciting content with the technical development of the Handbook.
- We will continue to test the output with real users via our testing group.
We’d love to hear from you
If you have seen some features or content that you think should be included or would like to join our user acceptance and testing group.
Just drop an email to Crea Barton.
