Using Sigmer's expertise in the design and development of on-line database applications University College London (UCL) were able to rapidly deploy an advanced ‘Find An Expert’ facility.
UCL is a modern, outward-looking institution and is one of the world's leading multidisciplinary universities. UCL was ranked fourth in the world in this year's Times Higher Education-QS rankings and no fewer than 21 Nobel prize-winners have come from the UCL community.
The Business Requirement
UCL has an international reputation for academic achievement and for the quality and expertise of its staff. The College actively manage (and encourage) the accessibility of key staff, who have the appropriate standing and experience, to national and international journalists and media organisations. The existing college facilities to allow journalists to find the correct expert for a particular subject were not as effective or easy to use as was required.
The challenge was to provide a database application that would work well for the three types of users. The requirements were as follows:
- Provide an easy to use interface through which the academic staff, the experts, could create and maintain their expertise profiles.
- Allow UCL’s media liaison staff to maintain and publish profiles
- Provide an attractive and journalist-friendly internet user interface through which journalists could search for experts.
UCL turned to Sigmer Technologies to develop a ‘Find an Expert’ application that would be ORACLE-based and would integrate seamlessly with existing UCL systems and infrastructure.
The Sigmer Solution
Sigmer first conducted a user-profiling exercise to help UCL understand in more detail the requirements of the three major user types (Journalists, Experts and Administrators). During this process it was identified that journalists and media organisations often worked away from their offices, and often at unusual hours of the day or night, and that it was necessary that the Find an Expert application would be easily accessible via iPhones, PDA’s and other mobile devices.
Central to the application was a sophisticated search facility that utilised the comprehensive meta-data that surrounded the expert profiles. This, allied to strong fuzzy-logic, provided journalists with a powerful but easy to use search facility. The meta-data encompassed everything from the specialist subject areas of the experts to their previous media experience and their availability for out-of-hours contact.
From the perspective of UCL experts and administrators, a key feature was that the application was fully integrated with UCL’s access control system (Shibboleth®) so that no additional login activities or passwords were required.
The Result
Sigmer delivered the complete Find an Expert application to the University on time and in budget - it having undergone extensive testing in the University’s quality assurance environment. Full documentation was developed and handed-over to the UCL Technical Support Team who would maintain the application going forward.
Neil Chester, Land Registry Market Research Team: "Sigmer provided a quality service from start to finish with a competitive quotation and a fast and efficient service. Throughout the questionnaire design process their experience enabled them to offer us invaluable advice to reach the best solution. Always available, friendly and helpful, contact was ever flexible to our changing needs, offering sound solutions to any problems that arose. Sigmers’ survey service enabled us to create a suitable questionnaire to meet our research needs, offering a variety of question formats. We were given access to an online reporting Portal, which enabled us to chart our progress through our customer research, and went a step further in providing daily compiled updates. Sigmer enabled us to gain the required levels of responses within the desired timescale. Prompt compiling of results into the format we desired then enabled us to analyse our results. Sigmer helped right to the conclusion of our research, providing assistance long after the results were available to us."
