SafePods are pre-fabricated rooms which can be used to securely access remote data for research purposes. A network of 40 rooms is planned for Universities across the UK. These allow researchers at a host university to connect to datasets held at a remote data centre, reducing the need to travel to work with sensitive data.
Horisk were commissioned to develop a brand, website and booking system for SafePods, along with all the admin tools required to manage the network securely.
Darren Lightfoot, Safepod Network Manager at the University of St Andrews, said "Horisk created a professional website with a bespoke booking system to specification for a UK wide project. I was very impressed with their ideas, knowledge, management and flexibility to achieve the website objectives and I would thoroughly recommend them."
This project involves
- Working with the project team to determine the audience and feel required for branding and develop a specification for the booking process and admin tools.
- Develop a brand which encompasses the high-tech nature of the network while providing reassurance of security
- Produce a modern and professional design for the public-facing website – which both educates users and potential hosts as to how SafePods work and allows researchers to find and book their nearest SafePod.
- Allowing the main website content to be fully maintained via a Content Management System, with researchers, organisations and data centres each able to manage their own data
- Developing a unique 3-party booking process – the researcher can view availability for their nearest SafePod and book an available slot, but both the SafePod host and remote data centre must accept the booking
- Allow for differing booking rules and time-slots for each data centre
- Refining the booking process to ensure ease of user for researchers and administrators
- Provide tools to allow SafePod hosts and data centres to complete all the processes required for each booking
- Provide management tools and reporting to manage the entire network. This includes reminders and recurring tasks for admin processes.
- Creating editable templates for communications
- Developing to the highest security standards to reflect the nature of the project
This shows our experience of
- Engaging with stakeholders to develop a unique booking workflow
- Producing a strong brand which can be used online and on physical products
- Developing a professional CMS-driven website with numerous types of content
- Allowing multiple types of user to maintain their own public-facing data
- Building a system that can resist multiple days of penetration-testing
- Developing a user-friendly process which will be used daily by researchers across the UK.
