Overview

Background

The aim of the project is to provide a “virtual visit” solution that will support the University to enable prospective undergraduate and postgraduate Students to imagine themselves being at the University of Edinburgh, by providing a space and place representation of the University and its environs, showcasing rich media content, which covers all aspects of Student life, including Edinburgh as a city. 

The solution should reassure users that the university is an exciting, friendly, inspiring and safe place to study and live. 

Such a solution is especially important at this time, when access to on-campus visits is restricted and the project has been rated as “Highest Priority” within the  Adaption and Renewal Team work programme.  

A previous, business-led project acquired and delivered a solution based around software supplied by Revolution Viewing (RV) - www.revolutionviewing.com, but this was never released externally due to issues of compliance with accessibility standards.

This project will include work undertaken within the earlier project and deliver an upgraded solution (Version 2) that can be released externally and that can conform to ISG compliance and procurement requirements.  

This is a very time critical project, with an aggressive timeline to deliver by 31st October 2020, which is the first Student Open Day.   

The solution will be delivered by RV as a hosted solution (SaaS or Software-as-a-Service), with a limited amount of integration with other University applications, managed by Student Recruitment and Admissions (SRA). 

RV have already been engaged to provide the necessary Project Resource and a separate, brief, requirements gathering, plan, design and costing exercise has already taken place.  Therefore, one of the key aims of this project is normalise it as much as possible, ensure ISG and Procurement involvement where needed, and help ensure delivery to the satisfaction of all interested parties. 

Scope

Below defines the full scope of work relating to this project. Anything not included in the list below will be considered as out of scope and as such, if requested, may attract an additional cost.

The solution will allow Users to:

• Personalise their experience based on their subject or other area of interest (different lists for UG and PG)

• Be taken on a subject specific guided / thematic  tours covering up to 8 spaces or explore a filtered view of the relevant campus(es) as per the existing map view (but using new base mapping)

• Watch Youtube, Vimeo or Kaltura videos accessed directly or from 360-degree views / images of University locations (hereafter referred to as 360s) through content spots on a map of the city

• View image galleries accessed directly or from 360s through content spots

• Read text articles accessed from 360s through content spots

• Read high level information about each subject area from a dedicated subject intro page

• Speak to Students (and Staff?) directly using Unibuddy (DTI055)

The solution will allow the University to:

• Add, edit and delete videos, image galleries and articles through a CMS

• Edit 360 titles, start positions and content spot positions through a CMS

• Create subject specific/thematic  guided tours

• Add, edit and delete map pin categories (Student life, accommodation, academic, city etc) into which content can be added

• Add, edit and delete subject information

• Assign content to each subject/category

• Modify the calls to action

• Monitor performance using Google Analytics

• Migrate existing content from the phase 1 solution to the new CMS

• Bulk upload of content to CMS

Technically, the solution will be:

• Fully responsive, gracefully scaling on devices as small as 320px wide and as large as 1920px wide

• Embeddable in other web pages using an iframe

• Deep linked down to the level of 360 content spots

• Compliant with WCAG 2.1 to AA standard unless otherwise agreed and stated in the accessibility statement.  In situations where compliance relies on the University of Edinburgh to do something, for example, populating alt tags on non-decorative images, we will ensure the solution has the capability to meet compliance but we are not responsible for actually ensuring compliance is met for all content

• Built in accordance with our standard browser policy

• Built using HTML, CSS and Javascript. The CMS will be powered by Wordpress

• Hosted, supported and maintained by RV

Out of scope

The following were discussed between SRA and RV but agreed to push to future works / phases:

• Integration with a live events system - given the University is in the process of procuring an events platform and the tight delivery required for the initial launch of this product, it was agreed that we would park an integration until a future phase but this is a key long term goal. Therefore, the solution should be designed with this future ambition in mind

• Creating a “Student voice” on the platform is something that Edinburgh would like to develop in the future, perhaps with each subject having an associated student ambassador etc.

Objectives and Deliverables

Priority – M = Must Have; S = Should Have; C = Could Have; W = Want

• M = has to be satisfied for the final solution to be acceptable in terms of delivery dates, compliance, viability etc.
• S = high-priority requirement that should be included if possible -workarounds may be available
• C = a nice-to-have requirement
• W = want but will not be part of this project

• O = Objective
• D = Deliverable

*Note:  This is of even more importance due to Covid imposed travel and attendance restrictions and can enable potential Students to get a feel for the University, its facilities and its position at the centre of the vibrant City of Edinburgh.

Benefits

• Provide and enable both potential new and current first year Students with an enhanced User experience, with rich video, media and content, that will allow them to take a virtual tour of the University without needing, or potentially being able to physically attend
• Provide Students with reassurance that Edinburgh is a vibrant, safe, world class University to conduct their studies
• Enable SRA to showcase the University to potential Students by placing them within context within the city of Edinburgh
• Support Student recruitment activities, such as virtual open days

Success Criteria

• Provide an application that will support SRA in their delivery of high quality Open Day replacement activity during cycle 2020/21
• Provide a longer term student recruitment tool, with effectiveness assessed by Google Analytics (reach) and user surveys (satisfaction)
• Fulfil stated purpose to excite, reassure and prepare, assessed via sentiment-based survey questions

Project Milestones 

**Please note that the Service Wrapper milestone has been discussed and pushed back in agreement with Suran Perera, who will review on his return from annual leave