We’re looking for a Senior Digital Project Manager to join our growing team.

Location: Northern Quarter, Manchester City Centre
Contract: Permanent, full-time
Hours: Monday – Friday, 9.00 – 17.30 (37.5 hours per week)
Holidays: 20 days plus Xmas shut down and public holidays
Salary: £32k – £42k pa (dependent on experience)
Benefits: Company phone & laptop
Reports to: Managing Director

We’re a small digital agency with ambitious growth plans, but you’ve heard that before haven’t you? Yeah, everyone says it, we know. But in our case it’s true. And this role sits at the heart of the agency we’ll be growing together.

We’re looking for someone who can show us their superstar qualities and be promoted accordingly. And for those real superstars that go above and beyond in helping with the agency’s growth and success, there’ll be the offer of share options of course.

There are several parts to this role.

The first is senior project management. This means taking all our projects from initiation through to launch. To do this successfully we think you’ll need a minimum of 5 years’ experience delivering a range of digital projects from ecommerce websites to Facebook applications.

You’ll also manage the 2 junior project managers helping them solve problems, write specs for smaller projects, improve their knowledge of the digital landscape and generally develop. You’ll approve all their output from a QA perspective and be ultimately responsible for the quality of the output of the agency as a whole. As well as managing the junior PMs, you’ll work closely with the development team manager (remote office) and the designers (in-house and freelance) to get projects delivered on time, on brief and on budget.

The third part of the role is responding to briefs from new or potential clients. This means you’ll need a good understanding of the digital landscape and you’ll need to be able to advise on best practice in user journey planning, usability, accessibility, creating websites and apps which achieve the client’s objectives, online marketing and branding, social media and achieving user-focused design which remains true to the client’s branding and objectives.

You’ll need knowledge of:

- User-focused website design
- User experience and user psychology
- Digital project planning
- Project management
- Team/studio management (although the MD will retain responsibility for all HR)
- Relationship building and account management
- Managing suppliers
- Open-source frameworks (within reason, we’re not looking for a developer)
- Technical limitations and constraints
- Search engine marketing
- Social media marketing

The successful candidate will need to demonstrate skills and experience in:

- Taking briefs and listening to what the client is looking to achieve
- Writing proposals with recommendations, our approach and an outline of the site/app’s proposed functionality with costs
- Information architecture planning and mapping
- Producing wireframes
- Facilitating and contributing to discussion around a project’s creative treatment
- Writing project specifications
- Producing realistic project timelines and then managing the project in accordance with that timescale
- Setting and controlling project budgets
- Managing change requests effectively

Just send your CV and covering letter through to nina(at)worshipdigital.co.uk to apply for the role. We’d love to talk to you about how Worship can help you realise your career goals in a friendly, supportive environment.

Recruitment agencies, you know what’s coming don’t you? We love you but we don’t need any help filling the role, thank you. If we do, you’ll be the first to know :-)

Planning a user journey which is centered around the needs of a site’s primary user types is central to the success of most of our clients’ projects.

Simply put, a user journey is the route that a user may take in order to reach their goals when using a website or web application.

We have to make it as easy as possible for a user to achieve their goals but we mustn’t forget the client’s goals. We want the site to be user-focused and results-focused. That said, if you do a good job of the user-focused bit, it often leads nicely into the results-focused bit. In other words, if we build it [in a user-focused way], they will come. Was it Field of Dreams where Kevin Costner said that?

By putting your users’ needs first you communicate that you’re a customer-focused business. You’re saying ‘we care about your experience with us and we understand your needs’ without actually having a big banner on the homepage with those words spelled out.

By showing your users a nice time and satisfying them on the site, you’re showing them what it would be like if they actually bought something from you.

Ultimately, you’re building trust, the lynch pin of all marketing communications.

UK ministers are preparing a major expansion of the government’s powers to monitor the online activities of every person in the UK. The law, set to be officially outlined at the Queens’ Speech next month, will detail the Government’s plans to legally require internet companies to install hardware enabling GCHQ (the Government Communications Headquarters) to record and have access to the digital communications data of all UK residents. This would include but not be limited to data relating to phone calls, texts, emails, web browsing, Facebook updates, and Skype communications.

The policy, ostensibly in a bid to increase public safety ahead of this summer’s Olympic Games, comes In spite of a previous attempt to introduce a similar law being abandoned by the former Labour government in 2006 in the face of fierce opposition. In a statement, the Home Office confirmed “It is vital that police and security services are able to obtain communications data in certain circumstances to investigate serious crime and terrorism and to protect the public.”

Even if these proposals were to come into law the GCHQ would not have access to the content of communications without a warrant. There would only be on-demand access to information such as the duration of phone calls, when emails were sent and with whom individuals are in contact with, with additional access requiring a warrant. This breach of individuals’ privacy is still a cause for concern, however, as it goes beyond the information currently held on all non-digital communications.

Unsurprisingly, the proposed legislation has split political opinion. Ministers in support have insisted that the new laws will simply broaden the scope of the powers the police and intelligence agencies currently possess to cover new forms of communication. Justice Secretary Ken Clarke said in an interview with the BBC, “With communications, at the moment, records of all phone calls are kept and can be accessed. Technology has moved on… so what is proposed is the rules nobody was complaining about when it was telephone calls should now be extended to others, with the same safeguards.”

In opposition, senior Tory backbencher David Davis said the proposals represented an unnecessary extension of the power of the state to “snoop” on its citizens. The European Commission, which has in the past pulled up the British Government over online privacy breaches, would also be likely to object to this latest proposal to monitor innocent British (and EU) citizens, which could potentially breach European human rights laws. Digital expert Trefor Davies has also been quoted in the British press as saying: “[The legislation]…is not only likely to be wasted money but will be a step towards entering a category of nation currently occupied by the likes of China and Iran.”

The Queen’s Speech, which marks the beginning of the 2012-13 parliamentary session, will take place on 9 May 2012.

As part of the promotional campaign for the upcoming release of the Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City video game by Capcom, their ad agency Head First approached us to build a Facebook application which would increase awareness of the game and the brand as a whole. The brief was create a game which required several players and utilised Capcom’s promotional videos for the game.

We worked with Head First to create a squad-based game which enabled players to invite their friends and create their squad using their Facebook account.

Users could be part of up to 3 squads, as either the leader of the squad or as an invited member. The goal for each squad was to respond as quickly as possible to a weekly video which contained a code. Each video was preceded by a countdown which ensured that players knew roughly when a new video was going to be launched.

Once a video was uploaded, each squad member had to enter the code from the video into the website after logging in. Once all 4 members had entered the code, the squad’s response time was recorded and inserted into a weekly leader board.

Participation was encouraged by offering prizes both for weekly winners, and a grand prize for the team which responded fastest overall. Sharing was encouraged by the squad element of the competition, as users were required to form a 4-man squad to stand a chance of winning.  Users were also prompted to update their wall when creating squads and entering the weekly code, which further served to promote the game across Facebook.

The application formed a key part of the campaign which ran for the course of 10 videos. As the videos, a key aspect of the game, were also trailers promoting the Operation Raccoon City game, we ensured that every participant in the competition was exposed to the primary promotional materials of the wider Head First campaign for Capcom.

The final video was uploaded on Friday 23rd March 2012, the day that Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City was launched.

Ground-Gas Solutions (GGS) is the UK’s leading environmental consultancy, specialising in continuous ground-gas data capture, analysis and interpretation. The GGS team has particular experience in researching new technologies, working with the University of Manchester amongst partners to develop new techniques in continuous ground-gas monitoring.

We were asked to create a new website for GGS with the main criteria being to present them in a more interesting way than their current site did. Their goal was to end up with a site that was engaging and something which would make them stand out from their competitors.

They wanted to communicate the core ideals and values of their company, namely that they were a more innovative and product-led company than standard environmental consultants.

We developed the site’s information architecture, focusing on the way that the content was accessed by the user in order to make the user journey more relevant and user-focused. We made sure that users could locate the information they required quickly and easily. By incorporating testimonials, we were also able to convey the impact of the client’s work and engender trust among users.

We created a new design which articulated the client’s innovative approach. With this design we moved away from the stereotypical stock imagery of their sector, instead focusing on the nature and impact of their work with the use of bespoke illustration and artwork.

By adding a blog to the website we helped GGS to show more of their personality and use an on-going content-driven strategy to help the site become more visible to search engines. In addition to this we also created a social media outreach strategy, encouraging GGS to interact with their customers and people within their industry, further breaking down the barriers between the consultancy and its potential client base.With attractive overstates and simple icons, we communicated the services offered by GGS without the need for large blocks of text or the use of overly technical, dry language. This helped convey what GGS does in a more interesting, accessible way.

The end result of this project was that GGS had an online presence which sets them apart in their sector, and a website which is interesting, intuitive and supports both regular content updates and increased engagement.

If you work in the digital industry, have a website, or have just used the internet recently you may already be aware of imminent changes to the laws regarding online privacy. The impending legislation is set to govern how cookies are used, or as positioned by some critics, is set to deliver a damaging blow to the online experience to which we’ve all become accustomed.

The legislation in question is an amendment to the EU’s ‘Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive’ (2003). While this amendment officially came into force in Europe in May 2011, the UK was given a year’s reprieve and UK websites are not required to comply until 26th May 2012. It seems as though this delay way granted in order to give UK companies time to adapt and find practical solutions to these changes.

So what does it mean? In short, cookies are still allowed, but any website wishing to use them (or similar technologies) is required by law to receive ‘informed consent’ from a user in order to do so. The regulations cover all cookies (e.g. session and persistent cookies), from when a user opens the browser window to when they exit the browser, and consent is required for every kind of cookie, on an individual basis.

There are exceptions to the legislation however, depending on the use. For instance, when the use of cookies is ‘Strictly necessary for the provision of an information society service requested by the subscriber or user,’ consent is not required. One example of such an exception would be an online shopping basket, where items are added and stored for purchasing later in the browser session.

So how can you ensure that you comply with these regulations? The answer is simple; either stop using non-essential cookies or ask for consent.

How you go about getting consent for the cookies you use is another matter. The Information Commissioner (who will be enforcing the legislation) has provided full guidelines on the whole process including a series of examples of how consent could be requested, with a number of alternative techniques suiting different situations.

Peter Hook contacted us when he wanted to re-invigorate the iconic Fac51 Hacienda brand by creating a new online portal. His goal was to create a website which served people who’d experienced the nightclub and newcomers to the brand alike.

We created a Drupal-powered website which featured a discussion forum, a picture and video gallery, a blog, a music streaming feature for registered users which would host mixes by popular Hacienda DJs, a shop, an events section which promoted the Hacienda on tour, and a timeline section where the history of the Hacienda would be visible.

We also created 3D renders of the closed Hacienda nightclub which are used in the site’s background as a subtle reminder of the club for those that went.

The site got a great response in the discussion forums and is used to promote Hacienda events and tours around the world.

A report last year by the education regulator Ofsted revealed that computer lessons in schools are inadequate, failing to equip students with skills that are relevant in the modern workplace. Subjects such as Information and Communications technology (ICT) were deemed to have fallen below standards in 20% of Secondary Schools in England. Particular areas of criticism were reserved for teaching and the curriculum, with a lack of expertise and relevant subject matter highlighted in a rapidly evolving subject area.

The report found that pupils were given brief overviews but little opportunity to develop skills and an overall understanding of areas of ICT relevant to many contemporary work environments such as programming and databases. In failing to adequately cover such important topics schools are jeopardising pupils’ careers prospects. Poor teaching of such a crucial subject which is not compulsory for GCSE students has also seen an alarming drop in the numbers of pupils taking ICT. Indeed, between 2007 and 2011 there was a 64% reduction in students opting to study ICT to GCSE level, at a time when the uptake of vocational computer courses is on the rise.

This report from Ofsted comes in the wake of an equally damning assessment from Next Gen, an independent review of skills needed for the UK video games industry, and comments from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt which highlighted education as the primary threat to Britain’s success in the digital media economy. This is particularly concerning at a time when large numbers of young people are unemployed with poor job prospects and with economic rebuilding dependent upon us embracing a new economy.

Looking ahead to solutions to the problem of computing education, chief Ofsted inspector Miriam Rosen said: “In a world that is becoming increasingly reliant on technology, young people need to be given the opportunity to learn ICT skills in an interesting, challenging and relevant way. The government is expected to publish its technology strategy for schools, its blueprint on how ICT should be taught in schools in the New Year. The report is expected to recommend wholesale changes in the way that computing is taught to school-age children.

Last year O2 announced that it has begun a trial of the 4G mobile broadband technology in London. The telecommunications provider will run a 9-month pilot project, which will involve in excess of 25 base stations in heavily populated areas of the city Including Canary Wharf, Westminster and Kings Cross. Participants in the trial include several SME’s as well as members of the institute of engineering and technology.

The announcement signals the commencement of the first live trial of the technology in a British city and is intended to lay the foundations for the company’s commercial (4G) network. In order for a broadband service to be classified as 4G, it must meet the criteria of offering real-world download speeds in excess of 100mbps, while the user is mobile. The step up in performance from 3G is expected to enable individuals supporting the technology to watch HDTV over the connection, as well as place high-quality video calls.

This announcement comes in the wake of eBay’s ‘Mobile Manifesto’ report, submitted to Whitehall following consultation with retailers, mobile companies and consumer groups. The report outlines the steps eBay believes need to be taken in order for the mobile economy to grow in the UK. Making connections between its recent revenue growth and an increase in mobile commerce, the auction site claims that shopping with mobile devices like smartphones could be crucial to the recovery of the UK economy and future economic prosperity.

The manifesto urges the government to pressure Ofcom into implementing the delayed auction of the 4G spectrum, citing evidence that many shoppers already use the smartphones to shop. In addition to calling for governing bodies and network providers to improve the service to customers, the manifesto also singles out retailers for criticism, highlighting statistics which indicate that over two thirds of users still harbour reservations about the security of providing personal details over a mobile network, something for which retailers must share the responsibility.

As the online economy continues to prove resilient in the face of contraction in the retail sector overall, driven by the uptake of mobile devices, it is becoming increasingly important for businesses to nurture this revenue stream. Vice president of global fashion at eBay, Miriam Lahage said, “As smartphone and tablet ownership increases there will be even greater potential rewards for companies investing in mobile, and this is particularly true for retailers.” Commenting on the O2 initiative, she added “This O2 initiative is an important step to improving UK mobile infrastructure, and will give consumers in London a taste of what is to come after the 4G rollout.”

Once completed, the O2 project is set to move the UK a step closer to 4G, a process which has been delayed for four years due to disagreements between operators, including O2, combined with a lethargic approach to the issue from Ofcom. Since 2008 other countries around the world have made significant ground on the UK, including the US, Australia and Germany, to name but three that have already implemented 4G. In light of this it is clear to see why businesses and politicians alike are placing pressure on telecommunications companies and industry regulators to resolve an issue which is costing the country a reported £730million for each year 4G is not commercially deployed.