Research involvement hub for Queen’s University Belfast
A website for the Personal and Public Involvement Hub at Queen’s University Belfast, bringing PPI guidance, case studies, events and resources from across three faculties into one place, for researchers and for the public taking part.
The PPI Hub in numbers
The challenge: guidance spread thin
Queen’s University Belfast has outstanding Personal and Public Involvement research running across three faculties, engaging hundreds of contributors.
It was spread across the university, and so was the guidance on how to do it well. A researcher starting out and a member of the public thinking about taking part need very different things from the same body of material, and neither had one place to go for it.
PPI also has a vocabulary problem. A researcher knows what Personal and Public Involvement means, and somebody who has simply been invited to join a study does not, so the same material had to be reachable without anybody learning the terminology first.
And it had to sit inside the university’s brand without reading as a departmental page. The Hub represents work across three faculties, so it needed to feel like a place in its own right.
Our approach: one hub, two routes
One place for the guidance, the examples and the people, reachable from either side of the research.
Researchers get the practical material: how to involve people well, what good looks like, and case studies from across the three faculties showing it being done. The resource hub gathers guidance that had been scattered around the university into a single, filterable place.
The public side is written for somebody who has been invited to take part and wants to know what that actually involves. Same material, different route in, and no requirement to know what the acronym stands for.
Events are published by the PPI team as they are scheduled, and there is a sign-up route into the network itself, which is what turns a reference site into somewhere people come back to.
What we built for the PPI Hub
A reference site for two audiences who need the same material explained in different words.
Resource hub
Fifty documents of guidance gathered into one filterable place, having previously been spread across three faculties.
Case studies
Real PPI research from across the university, showing what good involvement looks like rather than describing it in the abstract.
Events listing
Published by the PPI team as they are scheduled, which is what gives people a reason to come back.
Two routes in
The same material reachable by a researcher who knows the terminology and by a member of the public who has just been asked to take part.
Network sign-up
A way to join the PPI Network at Queen’s, which turns a reference site into something people belong to.
On-brand build
Built inside the university’s brand while still reading as a place in its own right rather than a page hanging off a faculty site.
The Tech-Spec
Laravel and Vue, with an admin the PPI team use to publish case studies, events and resources themselves. The resource hub is structured rather than a folder of files, so guidance can be filtered by what somebody is trying to do rather than by which faculty happened to produce it.
HTML5, SCSS, CSS3, vue.js
Laravel (MVC framework)
Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager
Services on this project
Most of our clients use more than one.
Bespoke websites
Designed and built from scratch around your business rather than adapted from a template. Every page and every field is there because it earns its place.
→ 02Web applications
Software that does a job for the business rather than describing it. Members platforms, custom admin software and internal tools built around how the work actually gets done.
→More work
A few of the other projects we have built.
