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Customer Story: Central Highlands Development Corporation

Customer Story: Central Highlands Development Corporation

The Central Highlands Development Corporation (CHDC) is a not for profit funded by the council to further the economic and social development of the central highlands region in Queensland, Australia. In partnership with WorkingMouse, CHDC has redeveloped their website to better support the region and created a new platform that changes the way stakeholders can interact with local industries.

Backstory

CHDC are constantly looking for new ways they can bring more value to the region with innovative solutions. As with many organisations, they are fighting the constant battle of modernising legacy systems. To this point, the old CHDC site had reached a point where it was no longer sharing the right information with the community. This was in part due to its design and the volume of information available. CHDC had already attempted to create a new website. However, the scope delivered was less than desirable. It was at this point, CHDC engaged WorkingMouse with two problem statements. Rebuild the CHDC website and create a new platform that promotes amazing local food and produce.

The Scope

In scoping the project the WorkingMouse development team used a number of exercises from the Way of Working discovery kit. The most value came from creating user personas for CHDC. Once this was done, CHDC was able to provide WorkingMouse with contact details for user interviews who matched the personas. The team completed user interviews with each persona and discovered a common theme across both projects that would ultimately lead to a shared creative solution. Every persona was ultimately after information. That information was unique to them sharing or finding, easily and at the right time. Adopting a design led approach, the team determined that both platforms should be built around shareable resources.

Behaviours

Upon discovery of the underlying problems the team were able to experiment with Codebots behaviours. Specifically, WorkingMouse was able to implement the Resource Behaviour. It is a back end controllable behaviour that allows users to create their own resources with text, images, videos and links in a common structure. The behaviour then allows for the resources to be searchable and filterable within groupings. This lead to a multi filter selector that enables the end user to filter exactly what resources are relevant to them. CHDC staff can control their own resources and Grown in the Central Highlands vendors can submit their own information for the platform. Below is an example of resource and filtering implemented on the site.

The Platforms

The CHDC website is now live. All of the legacy resources and content have now been migrated. The tile system is responsive so its can be filtered and searched on desktop or mobile. The site took approximately 4 weeks for the team to create once they had linked the resource behaviour to the websites tile structure.

The Grown In the Central Highland platform is also live. The team were able to customise the the resource behaviour into a brand new platform in only two weeks. The resources in this platform also include date and availability. It is supplied by a single update form that the local produce owners can use to update their profiles.

The Future

CHDC chose the fixed time variable scope agile delivery method. Working alongside the development team, the product owners where able to vary back the scope to match all stakeholders requirements.

CHDC are now in a continuous modernisation mindset, they are looking to continue the partnership as they use the site as their community information tool. They understand the website is not a fixed asset but continuously improving.

As for the Grown In the Central Highland platform, CHDC are now experimenting with the value it can bring the local community. Once this has been achieved, they own the source code of the platform and will be able to use WorkingMouse and Codebots to licence the platform out to other regions with our Software as a Service behaviour.