Urban Element choose one charity a year to support and in 2012 we were proud to offer Special Effect a new website free of charge to support their amazing and life changing work the best way we know how.
Special Effect is a charity dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for people with disabilities using technology.
The Special Effect of our approach
When we build websites, we go through a vigorous project process refined over the years, from sales and consultancy to design, build and testing.
Regardless of the size, industry or budget our approach ensures that we have done all we can to create a website that will help our clients achieve their goals.
Game Therapy
Mark Saville from Special Effect wanted to overhaul their current website that offered no engagement.
“We need to tell people the benefits of what Special Effect do quickly and visually. We do a lot more than help people play games. People sometimes see games and computer games as a social thing rather than ‘game therapy’ which it really is. We help people who are severely disabled use and access technology. We do whatever it takes to help people benefit from our services”
From day one
From the very beginning we took the time to understand Special Effect’s work and requirements. The whole Urban Element team have been involved and the experience has brought both organisations much closer together. We were also keen not to miss out on the opportunity to play computer games using eye gaze controls!
Changing Perceptions
We felt strongly that the new website could achieve so much more for this client. The previous website desperately needed a redesign. We took it as an opportunity to reinvent how this charity could be perceived online.
And that’s what we did..
The new website is without doubt one of the best we have ever designed and built.
The biggest challenge was to make it compliant with all of the requirements that the website of this caliber needs, without compromising on design and user experience.
What gives this website an even bigger advantage is the Adobe Business Catalyst Content Management System (BC) — a powerful, extremely capable system but also simple to use. There’s almost no limits to what the client can do with it. They can update, make changes and manage the content themselves without being reliant on any external agency to help them.
A big part of BC’s brilliance is that it gave us the ability to build completely bespoke web applications for events, media centres and more. These aren’t pre-existing customisable applications – these are powerful, built from ground up, web apps specifically made for this client’s needs.
Special Effect do so many great things and we are very proud to be part of the solution that promotes their work to the world. It has been an absolute pleasure working with their team to produce their new website. We hope that all of these efforts combined will help them achieve extraordinary results.
Before
After
