A lovely project for a great client.

We’ve been working with The Open University to develop some accessible, interactive content about the periodic table of elements for its Open Learn site.

Open Learn exists to provide free access to Open University learning materials. It is effectively an interesting, useful and “gentle” introduction to the world of Open University.

This periodic table content was developed to coincide with the International Year Of Chemistry. As with all Open Learn content the brief was to be interesting and informative and not to assume too much prior knowledge on the part of the target user.

Rather than develop a single interactive environment our approach was to break the learning objectives down into a series of single topic applications. These include an introductory video piece about the history and importance of the periodic table, “elements that changed the course of history”, “elements of the world”, and “body chemistry”.

To the extent that it was possible we wanted to recreate the immersive experience of the best science shows, where learning is achieved through interaction with single-topic experiments and displays.

We used rich imagery and illustrations to bring the periodic table to life and capture the imagination of the user. The navigation and hierarchy were both kept very simple and intuitive to allow easy access to the different applications. This simple approach allows the user to lightly browse topics or, if they prefer, delve deeper into the hard facts and data of the periodic table.

The following technologies were used to develop the apps…

HTML5 Video – By using the HTML5 <video> tag we made sure that the multimedia content in the application would be 100% compatible with the iPad and other mobile devices.

CSS3 – CSS3 was used to create interactive elements on the pages like the buttons – allowing us to reduce the number of assets (images) on the page. It was also used to create new animations and transitions supported on modern browsers

jQuery – jQuery was used through the site to allow users to interact with the data on the pages, and provide support for older browsers that don’t support CSS3 animations. Plugins such as jQueryUI and jQuery Reflections were used to add these effects. jQuery Scrollpane was used to support iPad style page scrolling.

It was a joy to work with the OU team on this project. The teaching staff should definitely write a book on this stuff if they haven’t already. Most of the really interesting content and periodic table facts that “make” these apps came from them.

Have a play. And learn.

Everything about this job has been great.

It was the result of a recommendation by Ewan McIntosh (thanks Ewan), and it speaks volumes of the value of a recommendation from Ewan that we were given the project without a pitch.

Then we found out both that the brief was awesome and that the people behind it were lovely.

The brief was to create an interactive version of the CBI‘s 6 monthly climate change tracker report.

The CBI is the “voice of business” and, as far as climate change is concerned, it uses that voice to lobby the government for policies that incentivise businesses to, and reward businesses for, doing right by the environment.

The Climate Change Tracker is the CBI’s assessment of Government performance against the CBI’s priorities for the Power sector, Transport, Buildings and Industry.

The end of June saw the publication of the fourth such report, which had previously taken the form of printed booklets and PDF documents only.

The CBI asked us to develop an interactive version that allows users to drill down into the various layers of supporting information and context that underlie the CBI’s verdicts.

That we did.

But we also developed a series of four interactive visualisations of the data, each of which affords the user a slightly different perspective on the issues.

The variations in the way that the data has been visualised allow each of the three dimensions of Time, Industry Sector and Progress Rating to be prioritised.

This project represents the CBI’s first foray into the interactive visualisation of its data.

(Its potential goldmine of data).

And we await detailed feedback from the various audiences and stakeholders for this highly rewarding toe in the water.