ESS - European Spallation Source

Background

For one of Europe’s largest multi-disciplinary research facility, European Spallation Source, Odd Hill got the chance to work tightly together with their communications and IT-officers in order to improve and enhance their digital presence. Historically, this has been our largest project in the shortest amount of time.

Detailed information, in a neat and clean layout

The biggest problem ESS faced was the majority of its visitors wanted to dwell in highly detailed scientific data. This should be available not only because of pure interest and the ability to follow the construction of the facility and their projects, but also because of Swedish government purposes. Everything should be readily available and transparent on what the money is spend on. At the same time, another problem they faced was how to get a so called regular visitor, someone living in Lund, to understand what ESS is and what is happening over there on the building site.

How we solved these problems, with the communications officers, was to always keep our personas in mind. We initially had a personas workshop which resulted in the creation of a detailed design system with a large variety of ‘modules’ that the communications department could use to guarantee a good user experience.

They now have the flexibility as an editor to produce content and structure it in the way that they know best. We have given them the tools, and now they can play around with it.

One goal - one strict deadline

Our client has a great technical (and scientific!) knowledge, and was able to make quick decisions for us when needed. Odd Hill decided to challenge them to adopt to an agile work process. This allowed us to keep strict sprints in order to ensure our next steps was following the right level of priority. We knew from the start that this project, with so many stakeholders and requests, would need to be handled through an agile process. Changes should and could be made a long the way, as long as everyone is on board.

The journey

The project was over a 6 months period and it has been Odd Hill's largest project in the shortest amount of time throughout the years, which we are very proud of. Everyone in the team worked tightly with the client on a day-to-day basis and delivered exceptionally, especially towards the end, since we had a deadline already set from the start. We made sure that the right people spoke to one another, which ensured quick decisions and changes. Of course, in the last two weeks, a lot of rules and strict processes were forgotten, but once again, with transparency - everyone was on board with this.