HALO Hub - The Idea Bureau

Introduction

Surrey Wildlife Trust is one of 46 Wildlife Trusts working across the UK. With the support of volunteers and members, they care for over 5,000 hectares (ha) of land in Surrey across 60 reserves. They also work with other organisations and landowners to extend, protect and connect habitats for wildlife across the county, and to inspire local communities and young people to care for nature where they live.

Ecosystems Knowledge Network (EKN) are an existing client of ours. They’re a leading forum created to ensure the natural environments of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland support wellbeing and prosperity for everyone. Bringing together people across a variety of sectors – from ecology to economics, finance to farming, and health to housing – they provide unique opportunities to learn from practical examples and innovative ideas for financiers and investors, non-environmental professionals (such as architects and planners), and public bodies, including Defra and local councils.

Surrey Wildlife Trust, as a mix of professionals from the environmental sector, came up with the idea for The Habitat and Land Observation (HALO) Hub: a project that provides a place to share research projects, events and discussions on the use of technology in monitoring and supporting nature recovery within the UK. It specialises in satellite and land observation techniques, including the use of high-resolution satellite imagery, UAV/drones and bio-acoustics for informing and monitoring habitat restoration. EKN then facilitated the hosting of this forum on their website, creating a partnership between themselves and Surrey Wildlife Trust to enable them to bring it to life.

The hub’s current users include ecologists, rangers and researchers, and academics from University of Surrey. In the future, there’s potential for the general public to take part in this observation and gain access to the forum through citizen-based science projects; there’s also already a small commercial audience working on projects for similar products across the UK.

The Problem

Hosted on the EKN website, and funded by Surrey Wildlife Trust, the partnership’s aim was to create a space for people to have forum-based discussions around things such as ‘legislation,’ ‘analysis’ and ‘data processing.’ We were recommended to Surrey Wildlife Trust by EKN to collaborate on this project, which made things quite seamless, as we already had an established relationship with them.

The partnership wanted to create a space that people in relevant industries could come to to have discussions on these topics. Their requirements for the platform were to include Events, Projects and Topics sections in which members could post relevant content, as well as search for specific keywords (e.g. ‘remote sensing,’ ‘LiDAR’), showcase industry-related events and highlight relevant projects within the sector for other members to read up on.

“The Idea Bureau captured our ideas and transformed them into reality. Their clear communication and dedication to the project has been outstanding. I’d recommend the team to anyone looking for bespoke web design. Thank you so much!”

Francesca Boyd

Knowledge Exchange Lead at Ecosystems Knowledge Network

Our Solution

One of the selling points of our pitch to EKN and Surrey Wildlife Trust partnership was our suggestion of creating a bespoke solution for their needs, rather than using an off the shelf product. We’d previously built a similar platform for Consortium for Street Children that would inform the design for the bones of the HALO Hub; however, we modified and built upon this greatly to ensure it would fit both EKN and Surrey Wildlife Trust’s needs.

Once the approach was agreed, we collaborated with the client to define the areas within the hub. They also gave us an idea of what sort of content to expect within these areas, and the type of access users should have, which assisted us in writing a functional specification that we could build towards. Throughout the project, we kept the project owners close to the work, getting them involved with testing and validation. At the project’s end, we participated in a closed demonstration the client gave to its key stakeholders and community members, sharing the outcome of our work together, which was very rewarding.

Client:: Surrey Wildlife Trust
Project Type:: Bespoke Platform
Tags:: Workshops, UI, UX, Development

How the platform works

The HALO Hub works much like a forum, where members can post, comment and react to content, as well as build community and discussion around specific topics relevant to their industry, points of interest and project outcomes. We’ve given them the ability to post their own content: a new feature to the core platform, as only admins could do so previously. Members can also now share their events and projects via the Events and Projects sections, tagging them with relevant topics that are then searchable on the website. The Events and Projects sections act like notice boards for members to discover new initiatives and hear about their findings.

We removed the old login mechanism to allow forum authentication to be handled by the EKN website; this is somewhat of a security feature in itself, as it means only EKN members can access content, and in some cases, must be approved by admins. The project team have a back-end admin area where they can control aspects of user interactions, for example: requests to join locked groups, curating topics, and managing any spam comments that might arise.

The original platform design was mainly focused towards children; however, this version of the platform had to be relevant to an adult audience. It was also very important to our clients that their reputation be maintained, so we updated the different sections of the website to reflect a more professional design, and to ensure it fit with the HALO Hub branding.

One of the core purposes of the organisations is to “use technology to monitor and support UK nature recovery”; the mechanism we’ve built allows them to do so by informing like-minded people of initiatives that align with this goal.

Working together

The main point of contact for the project was with Frankie from EKN, whom we’d worked with in the past – we got on well with them and because of this, things went very smoothly in terms of decision making, problem solving and work validation. They also acted as a source of truth for Surrey Wildlife Trust, providing information for them, before coming to us directly.

Our training provision for the two organisations included creating a series of bitesize training videos to bring them up to speed on using the hub. This is very helpful for newcomers, as they can learn at their leisure, without requiring any further input from us. Frankie also set up some user testing sessions for us to demonstrate the platform to its intended users, highlighting its features and functionalities. These sessions were very useful for us, as we were able to gain feedback from those present and also hear their ideas for the platform.

“It’s been a pleasure to work with The Idea Bureau in setting up the HALO Hub. They were extremely helpful in shaping our original ideas and were very receptive and responsive to suggested modifications during its development, and we’re really pleased with the end result.”

Andrew Jamieson

Project Development Manager at Surrey Wildlife Trust

Speeding up the login process with a unique feature

In order to access the HALO Hub, users need to become members of EKN. Because of the partnership between EKN and Surrey Wildlife Trust, this meant that allowing members to have access via their EKN profile saved them from needing to create two sets of login details and signing in twice. Connecting the login system from a third-party website (EKN) to enable logins on the new HALO Hub platform did present a challenge, from a technical perspective. We instigated a creative solution to overcome this problem by building a custom connector between the two websites: once a user clicks to access the hub, an instruction is sent to register them within the hub (if they aren’t already) and then mark them as logged in. For security reasons, the hub verifies the instruction before actioning.

Conclusion

This project proved a very satisfying one to complete for the two organisations, particularly as we’d already built a relationship with EKN. We were able to successfully deliver a custom forum that’s visually integrated with the HALO Hub brand, as well as being tightly connected to EKN’s website functionality. Providing this functionality with an off-the-shelf product wouldn’t have fulfilled the project’s niche requirements, so we’re pleased we were able to provide this level of quality for them.

It’s been validating for us in making the decision to champion a custom solution: we’re always pragmatic about our approach in offering the best value and quality for our clients, and we feel that we achieved this for the project. There’s also a strong possibility that it may be used as a starting point for us to build further member forums for the EKN platform, an exciting prospect for the future.