System Concepts at the BETT Awards 2012

System Concepts, together with the BBC and Aardman Digital, recently attended the BETT Awards promoting the innovative use of information technology in education.  The re-designed ‘Something Special: Out and About’ website, which we had all worked on, was nominated in the ICT Special Educational Needs Solutions (SEN) category.

The Park Lane Hilton was a great venue, with attentive staff and seemingly bottomless wine glasses. The  compere, comedian Patrick Monahan, applied his unique style to the evening by somehow turning an educational awards ceremony blue, supported in no small part by one of the BSL signers who responded enthusiastically to the signing challenge.

Whilst we did not win a BETT award for ‘Something Special: Out and About’ we are confident that it is a valuable resource for schools and parents of children with SEN.  The website provides freely available online activities for children with cognitive and motor impairments.

System Concepts visited SEN users at their schools to understand how they used the web, what they wanted from the activities and get feedback on proposed designs.  Aardman used this to create and refine the designs and activities.  This user centred design approach is described in more detail in our video case study.

As the awards progressed we were intrigued by the great examples of work coming out of the educational technology community, and are interested in seeing how user research and a user centred design approach could help with their development.

To help developers in the education sector to understand the benefits of user research and a user-centred design approach we are offering an introductory discount on our usability and user research services between now and the end of March to all BETT Nominees.  Please contact us on enquiries@system-concepts.com to get the details and discuss how we can help you.

In closing we would like to thank BETT for a great event and we look forward to coming back next year.