Thursday 26 January 2012
Newport Uni App Update NOW LIVE
The free Newport Uni app full update and refresh is now available on iPhone and Android. The Newport Uni app is the one stop shop for Newport’s prospective students, current students and staff. For more information view the Newport Uni app post.
Wednesday 18 January 2012
Newport Uni Mobile App
We are just about to launch the major update for our Newport Uni App, which includes even more useful content such as the Bus Timetable and Email. We’ve also given the design a bit of a refresh. The app is designed for use by prospective students, visitors, current students and staff, and is available on the iPhone and Android. Current students and staff can login, which then re-arranges the icons to display content such as internal news, email, timetable and print balance on the first screen.
The ’Newport Uni’ app is a must have for anyone studying at the University of Wales, Newport, or indeed anyone thinking of applying or even visiting us. Packed full of useful features for current and prospective students alike, you can browse all our available courses, find out what lecture you should be in at the touch of a button and so much more!
This smart app is exactly that ‘smart’, it will tailor the features and content to what’s right for you based on your needs as a current student or someone just thinking of applying, visiting or just checking us out.
 |
| Newport Uni app update available on iPhone and Android soon. |
This smart app is exactly that ‘smart’, it will tailor the features and content to what’s right for you based on your needs as a current student or someone just thinking of applying, visiting or just checking us out.
Monday 16 January 2012
Newport's Website Re-Design
A year on we thought it was about time to take a look back at our re-design of Newport University's website. Newport’s re-designed corporate website (www.newport.ac.uk) was launched late 2010. The old site suffered from information overload with a mass of links and banners across the homepage. It had grown so large that it became difficult to manage and content needed to be refreshed and improved. The challenge was to re-design the website, while promoting key corporate messages and improving the user experience, resulting in increased student applications, business engagement and alumni membership.
The old website:
It was decided that the new design should be bold and simplistic, with a focus on incorporating innovative multimedia, especially video and visually captivating photography. Several key points of entry to the site were designed into the homepage; the large rotating banner directing to very important content, the three student recruitment focused boxes underneath the banner and finally featured news and events. The standard footer, consistent across the site, links to our multimedia channel (including video and audio) and to our social media channels. The top level navigation uses drop down menus to reduce the time it takes for the user to find the information they are looking for.
The new website:
One year on and the robust design is still as effective as the day we launched. We are constantly improving it and we are working on making it more mobile friendly.
The old website:
It was decided that the new design should be bold and simplistic, with a focus on incorporating innovative multimedia, especially video and visually captivating photography. Several key points of entry to the site were designed into the homepage; the large rotating banner directing to very important content, the three student recruitment focused boxes underneath the banner and finally featured news and events. The standard footer, consistent across the site, links to our multimedia channel (including video and audio) and to our social media channels. The top level navigation uses drop down menus to reduce the time it takes for the user to find the information they are looking for.
The new website:
One year on and the robust design is still as effective as the day we launched. We are constantly improving it and we are working on making it more mobile friendly.
Video for Web: The Basics
Making a successful web video to promote your business, brand, event or service isn’t an easy task. The ‘surfing’ culture of the Internet means that if your video doesn’t appeal to the viewer within the first few seconds then they will quickly move on. Here are a few basic tips to engage your viewers and improve the quality of your video. This article is aimed at new web video producers with a fairly low budget.
Basic Tips
When shooting on consumer equipment there are a few basic rules to keep in mind. Use a tripod whenever possible to keep the shot still, use headphones to listen to the audio you are filming, set your scene in a well lit area, watch back important scenes on location just in case you need to shoot them again, and finally edit your clips and keep them tight.
The Message
Ensure that you have a clear message for the video, and take the time to plan the video around the message. Using storyboards, scripts, shot and location lists will always improve the overall quality of the content and make it clear what you are trying to achieve.
Length
When producing digital media for web you have to think bite-size. People simply won’t sit and watch a 10 minute video unless it is REALLY interesting to them. On average my web videos are around two minutes in length, and I make sure that the message is clear from the beginning. The shorter the better!
Equipment
These days we are spoilt for choice when it comes to cameras and tech. You can film good quality shots on your digital camera, DSLR or handheld consumer camcorder. Use a tripod where possible, consumer cameras can often produce shaky shots. If you are interviewing someone, use an external microphone with your camera, it will produce a much better sound. Use headphones to listen as you are filming.
Sound
We are all used to watching Internet video and we don’t usually expect perfect picture quality. But, if the sound is inaudible, then the viewer will instantly move on. It is vital to get good clear audio when shooting interviews, speeches, presentations etc. As mentioned above, using headphones to monitor the audio as you are recording is essential. It will help you judge the background noise and if a better location is needed.
Whilst interviewing someone, make sure the interviewee is close to the camera when using an onboard microphone, or close to the mic if it’s external. It sounds obvious but many videos are inaudible because the subject is too far away from the microphone.
Editing
Editing your footage is very important to get a more professional finish to your video. Tightly edit your clips – cut out any pauses at the beginning and end of the clip. There is lots of consumer editing software out there like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie to get you started, or to really get stuck in have a look at the professional packages such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro (Mac) and Adobe Premiere Pro. Export in a high quality format like H.264 MP4 and upload to YouTube or Vimeo.
Basic Tips
The Message
Ensure that you have a clear message for the video, and take the time to plan the video around the message. Using storyboards, scripts, shot and location lists will always improve the overall quality of the content and make it clear what you are trying to achieve.
Length
When producing digital media for web you have to think bite-size. People simply won’t sit and watch a 10 minute video unless it is REALLY interesting to them. On average my web videos are around two minutes in length, and I make sure that the message is clear from the beginning. The shorter the better!
Equipment
These days we are spoilt for choice when it comes to cameras and tech. You can film good quality shots on your digital camera, DSLR or handheld consumer camcorder. Use a tripod where possible, consumer cameras can often produce shaky shots. If you are interviewing someone, use an external microphone with your camera, it will produce a much better sound. Use headphones to listen as you are filming.
Sound
We are all used to watching Internet video and we don’t usually expect perfect picture quality. But, if the sound is inaudible, then the viewer will instantly move on. It is vital to get good clear audio when shooting interviews, speeches, presentations etc. As mentioned above, using headphones to monitor the audio as you are recording is essential. It will help you judge the background noise and if a better location is needed.
Whilst interviewing someone, make sure the interviewee is close to the camera when using an onboard microphone, or close to the mic if it’s external. It sounds obvious but many videos are inaudible because the subject is too far away from the microphone.
Editing
Editing your footage is very important to get a more professional finish to your video. Tightly edit your clips – cut out any pauses at the beginning and end of the clip. There is lots of consumer editing software out there like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie to get you started, or to really get stuck in have a look at the professional packages such as Apple’s Final Cut Pro (Mac) and Adobe Premiere Pro. Export in a high quality format like H.264 MP4 and upload to YouTube or Vimeo.
Friday 6 January 2012
PRINCE 2 and the Web Team
PRINCE 2 is a project management methodology and stands for Projects IN Controlled Environments, which sounds quite complicated, and in part in can be! In this post I’m going to talk about how it is benefiting the web team, and also about how it’s not too tough to utilise thanks to the tailoring aspect of the methodology.
PRINCE 2 is basically a framework for managing projects, it was originally developed from an IT background and is now identified as a best practice by the UK Government and widely used in both the public and private sector.
Going through the framework you quickly identify things that you already do when running web development projects, things like Change Control, keeping a daily log, and lots of other common sense practices. PRINCE 2 gives you a full and rich framework for managing a project, and importantly the processes and controls to manage change. How often do web professionals get caught by feature creep, never ending additional request for new features or change to spec? Normally you can expect a fair amount of this, so PRINCE2 gives you the weapons to handle these with concepts like Scope and Configuration Management.
Some of the advantages that really stood out for me were :
- The methodology gives you a well defined common language set that can be used when discussing projects, if you talk to someone else on a project who has done PRINCE2 whether it’s an external supplier or someone in your organisation they will know what you are referring to and understand the context and implications.
- In PRINCE2 responsibilities and roles within the project are well defined and understood. You can avoid having large working groups or committees where the purpose and roles within it are not clear.
- Most meetings only occur when required at stages in the project when decisions are to be made, rather organising them periodically when there may be nothing to discuss.
- PRINCE2 puts an emphasis on Business Case and ongoing business Justification, these are defined and monitored through the project, and can help avoid project continuing for the sake of it. PRINCE2 asserts that it’s valid for a project to close if the business case no longer holds up. If people involved in the project have to define formally what the project is to deliver and the benefits to the business, it’s much easier for those producing the solutions to deliver something that meets expectations and for everyone to measure the project’s success.
PRINCE2 consists of Principles, Themes, Processes and tailoring. I won’t go into details but I think it’s worth mentioning the Seven Principles of PRINCE2 to give you a taste of what it can offer. They are :
- Continued Business Justification
- Learn from experience
- Defined roles and responsibilities
- Manage by stages
- Manage by exception
- Focus on products
- Tailor to suit the project environment
Lastly I’d just like to mention Tailoring which is a big part of PRINCE2. Going through the course and covering all aspects of the framework you will undoubtedly come across parts that will be too in depth or not required for most projects you might be running. PRINCE2 allows you to tailor how you implement the framework to suit the scale and formality you require. Some parts of PRINCE2 have to be used otherwise the project cannot be said to be running under PRINCE2 but other parts can be made less formal or dropped altogether. If you are working in Higher Education JISC have developed a version of PRINCE2 that may suit you. This was the basis (with some tweaks) to how our web team project manage large web development tasks.
JISC Infonet
PRINCE Official Website
Good luck,
Joss
The web team attended a three day training course run by the Knowledge Academy which was held in Cardiff Bay, the three days were quite intense, there was so much to learn packed into each day, plus several hours of homework to do each night. On the third day there is an exam for the PRINCE 2 foundation course in which luckily we all passed :), some of our fellow learners were doing the five day practitioner course which has two extra days and another exam.
PRINCE 2 is basically a framework for managing projects, it was originally developed from an IT background and is now identified as a best practice by the UK Government and widely used in both the public and private sector.
Going through the framework you quickly identify things that you already do when running web development projects, things like Change Control, keeping a daily log, and lots of other common sense practices. PRINCE 2 gives you a full and rich framework for managing a project, and importantly the processes and controls to manage change. How often do web professionals get caught by feature creep, never ending additional request for new features or change to spec? Normally you can expect a fair amount of this, so PRINCE2 gives you the weapons to handle these with concepts like Scope and Configuration Management.
Some of the advantages that really stood out for me were :
- The methodology gives you a well defined common language set that can be used when discussing projects, if you talk to someone else on a project who has done PRINCE2 whether it’s an external supplier or someone in your organisation they will know what you are referring to and understand the context and implications.
- In PRINCE2 responsibilities and roles within the project are well defined and understood. You can avoid having large working groups or committees where the purpose and roles within it are not clear.
- Most meetings only occur when required at stages in the project when decisions are to be made, rather organising them periodically when there may be nothing to discuss.
- PRINCE2 puts an emphasis on Business Case and ongoing business Justification, these are defined and monitored through the project, and can help avoid project continuing for the sake of it. PRINCE2 asserts that it’s valid for a project to close if the business case no longer holds up. If people involved in the project have to define formally what the project is to deliver and the benefits to the business, it’s much easier for those producing the solutions to deliver something that meets expectations and for everyone to measure the project’s success.
PRINCE2 consists of Principles, Themes, Processes and tailoring. I won’t go into details but I think it’s worth mentioning the Seven Principles of PRINCE2 to give you a taste of what it can offer. They are :
- Continued Business Justification
- Learn from experience
- Defined roles and responsibilities
- Manage by stages
- Manage by exception
- Focus on products
- Tailor to suit the project environment
Lastly I’d just like to mention Tailoring which is a big part of PRINCE2. Going through the course and covering all aspects of the framework you will undoubtedly come across parts that will be too in depth or not required for most projects you might be running. PRINCE2 allows you to tailor how you implement the framework to suit the scale and formality you require. Some parts of PRINCE2 have to be used otherwise the project cannot be said to be running under PRINCE2 but other parts can be made less formal or dropped altogether. If you are working in Higher Education JISC have developed a version of PRINCE2 that may suit you. This was the basis (with some tweaks) to how our web team project manage large web development tasks.
JISC Infonet
PRINCE Official Website
Good luck,
Joss
Thursday 5 January 2012
Mobile Apps - Newport Slang Translator
In July 2011 we launched our first mobile app on Apple’s App Store and on the Android Market. We created a light hearted concept to test out developing and publishing apps. The Newport Slang Translator was born, and to our surprise it was very successful and generated local media interest.The concept was not a traditional way to advertise a University, but it proved very popular with prospective students and the 13-17 year old age group. This subtle way of increasing brand awareness in something that was fun and relatively easy to produce worked well. We included banners at the bottom of the screen linking back to sections of our website to tie in with current marketing campaigns.
Download from Apple’s App Store (for iPhone & iPad)
Download from the Android Market
We created the Newport Slang Translator using the industry standard development tools; Xcode 4 for iPhone and iPad, and Eclipse for Android. The voice actors are members of staff and were recorded using a Shure SM58 microphone with a Roland Edirol R-09HR portable recorder. The comedy concept and script was written by Joss (Web Development Manager), Bharani (Web Developer) wrote the code and Stephen (Web Multimedia Developer) recorded the actors and edited the audio.
This was a great cross discipline project for us to venture into mobile app development. Apps aren’t just about the code; it’s about a great idea that can often be very simple. Although it’s not a typical way to advertise a University, it proved that getting creative with technology and thinking outside of the box can produce great results.
Wales Online Interview (Western Mail)
BBC Radio Wales Interview
All the best,
Stephen
Wednesday 4 January 2012
360 Panoramic Virtual Tour
Hello, my name is Stephen Cleary and I’m the Web Multimedia Developer at Newport University. In 2011 I created virtual tours of our brand new City Campus and our Caerleon Campus. They are an extremely effective way of giving prospective students an idea of the University and its location before visiting. Upon researching 360 degree virtual tours (VTs) it was clear that we could produce a high quality tour in house for a similar cost to out sourcing, and then we would own the equipment to update it whenever necessary.
There are two main ways to shoot a VT. The quickest and easiest method (used by estate agents) is the one shot lens such as the GoPano Plus. This captures the full 360 image without the need for stitching multiple images together. It’s fast and can be 360 video or a 360 image, but the quality is not fantastic.
The other option is to use a DSLR camera with a circular fish eye lens and a panoramic tripod. With this method you take several high quality images at different angles from the same point, and then align or stitch them together using software such as Photoshop or Autopano Pro. This produces a high quality high detail virtual tour, but at first it can be difficult to perfectly stitch the images together.
We chose the second option in order to have full screen high detail tours on our website. It is time intensive compared to the single shot option but the results are impressive. We used a Nikon D5100 with a Sigma fisheye lens.
Each of our panoramas is three stitched images shot at 120 degrees. On location I shot the 360 six times, so a total of 18 images for each scene, and I then chose the best set. I processed the images in Photoshop, removing any shadows and then stitched it in Autopano Pro. I then arranged and exported the virtual tour to Flash using Panotour Pro. The flat jpeg panoramas are impressive in themselves, and we have used them in our new prospectuses.
All the best,
Stephen
Tuesday 3 January 2012
Introducing Newport's Web Team
Hello and welcome to our brand new blog. We are the Web Team at Newport University (South Wales) and this is our blog keeping you up-to-date with everything we do.
It's the first working day of 2012 and we have been planning to do this for most of 2011 so here goes...
We are a small but perfectly formed team creating and managing the University's website, intranet, mobile apps and multimedia. We combine both technical and creative skills to promote our University and higher education through the web and digital domains.
Our corporate website is running Sharepoint, we are in the process of re-designing our Intranet / Student portal and we have developed apps for Android and iPhone (Newport Uni / Newport Slang Translator).
The team consists of four core members plus an office guest from 3VTV.
Joss Ingram - Web Development Manager
Jonathan Clark - Web Administrator
Stephen Cleary - Web Multimedia Developer
Bharani Jayasuri - Web Developer
and Scott Mellors - Software Developer (for soon to be launching online TV channel 3VTV)
This is the first of many posts. We hope to inspire and share information with you and our web colleagues in higher education.
All the best,
Stephen
It's the first working day of 2012 and we have been planning to do this for most of 2011 so here goes...
We are a small but perfectly formed team creating and managing the University's website, intranet, mobile apps and multimedia. We combine both technical and creative skills to promote our University and higher education through the web and digital domains.
Our corporate website is running Sharepoint, we are in the process of re-designing our Intranet / Student portal and we have developed apps for Android and iPhone (Newport Uni / Newport Slang Translator).
The team consists of four core members plus an office guest from 3VTV.
Joss Ingram - Web Development Manager
Jonathan Clark - Web Administrator
Stephen Cleary - Web Multimedia Developer
Bharani Jayasuri - Web Developer
and Scott Mellors - Software Developer (for soon to be launching online TV channel 3VTV)
This is the first of many posts. We hope to inspire and share information with you and our web colleagues in higher education.
All the best,
Stephen
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