• Essex Police new site
• Girlguiding UK
• College Website Award
• Belfast Visitor and Convention Bureau
• Bedford College Tribal Integration Sucess
  • GMB website for the 21st Century
  • Northumberland Unitary Authority new site
  • Cheshire West Unitary Authority Goes Live
  • London law firm launches a new site
  • Unified is Percussions' Premier Partner in the UK
  • Top Marks for City and Guilds new web site
  • Dundas & Wilson Chooses Percussion
  • Northumberland Case Study
  • Bracknell and Wokingham College
• Technology for Marketing and Advertising

Unified Solutions works with the British Heart Foundation to re-launch the cBHF website with the all new Monster Heart Game.

December 2008

The original cBHF website was launched in September 2004 and was designed to make learning about your heart fun for young people under the age of 11. It was time for a refresh.

The BHF wanted to create a new look, dynamic website with longevity to cater for the needs of the under 11s and at the same time making it more appealing to ethnic children and encourage healthy lifestyles in young people. These children are sophisticated in their approach to new media and the site had to keep them interested whilst at the same time communicate important messages about healthy life styles.

The BHF was fully committed to using their existing Immediacy CMS – Version 6 to its full potential, and it was essential that the site met the WAI “AA” standard for accessibility.  The Immediacy CMS includes innovative accessability features to help editors and contributors to create content to W3C accessibility standards and, crucially, to maintain these standards over time.

Using the Immediacy media plug Unified developed a customised Video Galley, and also customised the navigation to allow editors to insert more pictures alongside text. A picture gallery area displays artwork that children have sent in.

Part of the brief was to include a series of educational games for a Games Arcade to help bring life to the site and engage the children with key heart health messages.

The Unified team along with design partner Itineris developed the Monster Hearts Game. Children are able to create their own Monster pet, to feed and keep healthy. The healthy lifestyle message is reinforced by the choices they make in feeding and looking after their pet monster. Children who feed their pet junk food, fail to take exercise and smoke cigarettes will see their pet’s heath deteriorate, The effects of a healthy diet and life style are shown positively by a healthy pet monster.

The Primary audience for the site is children aged 5 – 11 years old, boys and girls from all ethnic groups, living in the UK. The site is also relevant to children from all socioeconomic groups and all walks of Life. It was important that the site appealed to a Secondary audience of Parents and Teachers to use as an educational tool.  Itineris and Unified Solutions organised focus groups in schools throughout the UK to establish what children found engaging on web sites.

Debbie Allen, Children and Young People’s Programme Manager at the BHF said:

“Primary school age children helped create this website, telling us what they really wanted from a website and what interests them. By creating their own pet monsters to look after, children can learn how eating and activity affects their own heart health.”

The site was developed in Immediacy 6.0/ DMS 1.0 and Microsoft .Net 2.0. All database records are stored in a Microsoft SQL 2005 database for both Immediacy content and associated data recording.

To find out more about this project and others like it contact Sales on 01753 775050 e-mail sales@unified.co.uk