Introduction
The Western Australian Government is investing in the development of a skilled workforce to meet the growing demands of the Defence Industry. To promote its comprehensive package of initiatives, the Department of Training and Workforce Development (DTWD) engaged Doghouse Agency to build a website showcasing skills training, employment opportunities and employee incentives.
Background
Western Australia is preparing to meet future job demands in the Defence Industry by investing in professional and paraprofessional opportunities.
Managed by DTWD, key initiatives include expanding the 'The Other Force' advertising campaign, veteran career transition programs, job matching tool, awareness initiatives, and education pathways, internship and graduate scholarship programs, a reskilling and upskilling grant program, existing worker incentives for employers and free career and training advisory services.
Objectives
With our strong track record in building and designing Drupal websites for public-sector clients, the DTWD looked to Doghouse Agency to design and develop a standalone site to consolidate content from the department’s Jobs and Skills WA website and the Workforce Initiatives campaign.
This micro-site would incorporate a Career Guidance tool, a Defence Industry Course list, a Career Transition Tool for defence industry veterans, and a catalogue of relevant TAFE and university courses embedded via Microsoft PowerBI iFrames.
Requirements of the new site included:
- Prioritising the user experience, with a focus on specific audiences like ADF veterans
- Built on Drupal 10 and incorporating features like a searchable file library, customisable shortcuts toolbar, editing and revision history, automatic metadata generation, content scheduling, sitemap, and editable forms
- Integrated with Google Analytics
- Fully accessible admin for configuration and user management
- Integrated with social media
- Compliant with accessibility (WCAG 2.0) and campaign brand elements Customised content templates for advanced content creation, management and workflows.
- A news section, a general enquiry form and an advanced search function.
Approach
For this project, our Drupal Accelerator Framework proved to be an ideal fit, offering pre-built features and integrations to boost reliability and security, while cutting back on development time and costs.
Our high availability SaaS platform, District CMS, is designed specifically to meet the demands of government agencies, including accessibility standards, custom workflows and a user-centric admin UI to improve the back end experience for administrators.
For this build we followed a tried and tested approach tailored specifically for Drupal website development. This comprehensive approach covers all stages, from initial engagement and discovery, through to the finalisation of the project and transition to BAU.
Discovery
We began with a series of co-design sessions involving key stakeholders to define the website’s target audience, and explored innovative ways to present content to diverse audiences.
Designed to be adaptable and robust, a scalable information architecture was established to align with the site strategy while accommodating future content growth.
Through collaborative workshops with internal stakeholders, we defined and shaped the future functionality of the website, ensuring that the site's features and capabilities met the needs and expectations of stakeholders.
Prior to moving to the Design phase, we presented wireframes of primary site pages, and core website components to the DTWD team for review and feedback.
Design
We translated the brand style guide into a contemporary and engaging visual language, ensuring the new website’s design is a consistent reflection of the brand identity. Our aim was to create a visually unified and memorable user experience.
Adopting a componentised design approach, we crafted visually appealing and cohesive designs for key pages of the website. This strategy enhances consistency and user experience across various sections.
Our UX team focused on intuitive user experience in designing the course list, job occupation categorisation, and filtering functionalities. The goal was to optimise user interaction and navigation through these critical sections, enhancing overall usability and satisfaction.
Development Phase
Backend Development
Our team prioritised implementing our Drupal core Accelerator Framework and base site structure to provide an optimal platform for features. The base framework instance was installed and configured for development, utilising a shared codebase to enhance collaboration between our development and testing team members.
Continuous integration was integral to our build pipeline, and encompassed deployments, tests, a user acceptance testing (UAT) environment (test site), code repository, base theme, theme tools, and libraries.
Once the framework was established, we focussed on addressing functional requirements and features, focusing on common site functionality, component structure, and underlying libraries. Leveraging our Drupal Accelerator Framework allowed us to swiftly implement the core features of the website. The out-of-the-box capabilities of District CMS enabled us to streamline the process and concentrate on tailoring the configurations to meet DTWD's specific requirements.
These features included:
- A searchable ‘file browser’ style Media Library
- A Rich Text Editor with Defence-specific custom styles that are applied with a ‘one-click’ action
- Well-defined roles and permissions sets
- A sophisticated content workflow and moderation system that allows content to be actioned/transitioned in bulk
- Revisioning and scheduling capability - including the ability to keep archived content accessible while removing it from current displays
- Automated sitemap with different layouts for different target audiences
- Social media integration
- Simple navigation with additional shortcuts toolbars for content managers
- A curated selection of configurable components from our flexible design system
- Advanced content editing options allowing for diverse styles and layouts.
- Key content types like Occupations, Courses, News, and Landing pages were streamlined to simplify content management.
Migration
A key piece of the development phase was implementing a customised approach to migrating Course data from the Jobs and Skills WA website, ensuring proper functionality and display on the new website. As a result, updates to course content are seamlessly imported into the new website from public and private providers; automated notifications alert content managers, and the imported content is managed through a moderation workflow that minimises the task for content editors.
Frontend Development
We focused on WCAG 2.0 compliance and brand alignment, building visual components for consistency across devices. Tools like the Career Guidance tool and Defence Industry Course list were designed for user engagement and intuitive navigation.
Guided by our Design System, we created layouts and templates that prioritised content placement over adherence to a single content type. This approach allowed these templates to be versatile, applicable to various types of content, and reducing the number of templates needed. This simplified and accelerated the implementation of themes.
We integrated Google Analytics and social media platforms to enable comprehensive tracking and sharing capabilities.
Throughout the website development, our UI designers guided and assisted our frontend developers to overcome any challenges and pain points.
Results
The Other Force website is a comprehensive digital solution enhancing visibility and accessibility of career opportunities in the Defence Industry. It supports the State government’s workforce development initiatives, improves user engagement and satisfaction, and provides a scalable solution for future content and feature needs.
Conclusion
The successful collaboration between Doghouse Agency and DTWD has resulted in a central hub for Defence Industry career opportunities, supporting Western Australia’s efforts to build a skilled workforce. The new website, powered by District CMS, demonstrates Doghouse Agency’s expertise in delivering high-quality digital solutions to government agencies.
