• Concept design
• UI/UX
• Websites and web services

Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences web sevices revamped

Redandblue designed and implemented a comprehensive website renovation project for Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences. This project involved updating the Open Learning Materials site and the Helpdesk site. Additionally, a brand-new Arena site was created, designed to function like a digital magazine. The project also included a new theme for the existing Blogs and Web Magazines sites, utilising the theme developed for the Help project. All sites were made AA-level accessible, with special attention paid to accessibility on the administrative side as well. All sites except for the Help service remained under Redandblue’s maintenance after the projects concluded.

Jyväskylä University of Applied Sciences’ updated websites

arena.jamk.fi

oppimateriaalit.jamk.fi

help.jamk.fi

Also check out the new

verkkolehdet.jamk.fi

blogit.jamk.fi

Objectives

The goal was to renew and create brand-consistent, aligned, unified, accessible, mobile-friendly, secure, and user-friendly designs, interfaces, themes, and page templates for the websites involved in the project. The delivery included the design of interfaces and visual elements, technical implementation and testing of solutions, as well as necessary specifications, documentation, and project management.

The requirement specification outlined many shared functionalities across the projects, such as language selections, theme block editors, images and image galleries, media files, accordions, video and podcast embeds, iframe and JavaScript embeds, RSS feeds, social sharing buttons, and keywords and categories.

Concept development

The project began with a joint concept workshop for all projects, where the requirements specification, shared target audiences, goals, functionalities, and constraints of the projects were discussed.

Each website also had detailed concept workshops to refine the requirements specification, develop rough-level concepts for individual page interfaces, and review Jamk’s branding guidelines and visual benchmarks.

The websites utilised a common design system to some extent for UI elements, navigation, and footers, which helped create synergy in the project phases and a unified look for the final websites.

Open learning materials 

For over 10 years, Jamk has provided a WordPress-based platform for publishing open learning materials at https://oppimateriaalit.jamk.fi/. The materials published on Jamk’s open learning materials platform are public and released under a CC licence. These materials are freely used in teaching and guidance. The main target audiences of the site are higher education students, teachers, and experts.

The new Open Learning Materials site features various open learning materials. Previously available educational materials were moved to the revamped Help service. The site includes content in Finnish, English, Swedish, Persian, and/or Arabic.

Previously, Open Learning Materials was implemented as a multisite solution consisting of about a hundred sites. In the renovation project, the site was converted into a single-site solution, with content management now controlled by roles rather than separate individual sites. The content is categorised by themes.

Users can freely access learning materials on the service. A single page displays the structure of the learning material and a progress bar indicating how much material has been covered. Each learning material uses WordPress’s article page template and can include text, links, tables, images, embedded videos, and linked media files.

Blogs and online magazines 

Since 2009, Jamk has provided a blogging platform at blogit.jamk.fi for students and staff, where separate blogs have published, for example, expert articles on various topics, updates on RDI projects, exchange students’ experiences from around the world, or students’ learning diaries, primarily in Finnish and English. The online magazine service at verkkolehdet.jamk.fi has published public online magazines that are freely accessible. Both blogs and online magazines have a wide range of target audiences.

Jamk had decided that no new blogs or online magazines would be created starting from early 2023. In the project, both online magazines and blogs were updated with the theme developed in the Help project, making the sites accessible and giving them a modern look. The project maintained the unique URN addresses for the articles in the online magazines. The online magazines and blogs were transferred to Redandblue’s maintenance.

Help site

The Help site serves Jamk’s students and staff by providing various instructions through the web service. Instructions are generally visible to everyone, but some are shown only to logged-in users. Additionally, the site allows users to submit service requests to the Helpdesk.

The previous Helpdesk site was implemented as a single-site solution, but during the redesign project, it was converted to a WordPress multisite, where different help sections are now individual sites with their own navigations.

Content behind the login is shown to users who log in with Jamk’s Azure AD credentials.

Arena publishing portal

Jamk aimed to enhance the impact, quality, and quantity of the university’s publishing activities. A key part of achieving these goals was to consolidate Jamk’s expert articles into a single extensive online magazine on their own platform. The goal was for those interested in content at the substance level to easily find other articles on the same topic through categories and keywords.

The project created a completely new site, arena.jamk.fi. The new service features three top-level categories for different publication types and collection pages for various topic categories. Individual article pages have their own colour and pattern themes according to the publication category. Professional and popular articles have unique URN addresses.

The site also includes a comprehensive search function, allowing articles to be filtered by various criteria. Author pages were also created, featuring an introduction to the author and their published articles.

Explore the web services:

arena.jamk.fi

oppimateriaalit.jamk.fi

help.jamk.fi

verkkolehdet.jamk.fi

blogit.jamk.fi

Contact us

Heidi Nora-Klemetti

Account Director, Partner

Email: heidi@redandblue.fi

Phone: +358 40 575 2448