Today, there are a lot of testbeds, but they’re not sufficiently well-known and coordinated. I believe Swedishtestbeds.com will contribute to a better overview and coordination of existing testbeds, making our Swedish innovations reach the market quicker and contributing to more efficient processes.

Peter Eriksson, Minister of Housing and Digital Development
Launch of swedishtestbeds.com

In Short

Testbed Portal

The testbed portal is a part of the government initiative “Testbädd Sverige” (Testbed Sweden), and aims to stimulate Swedish research and innovation. Backing the project are also a number of national authorities and governmental organizations such as Vinnova, Energimyndigheten and IQ Samhällsbyggnad.

 

swedishtestbeds.com aims to gather testbeds within the area of built environment, with a focus on sustainability. The platform will facilitate communication between organizations with projects in these areas and testbed organizations who can offer possibilities to test, verify or develop ideas and methods. The hope is the function as a hub and catalyst for the development of Swedish innovation.

­swedishtestbeds.com

What's a Testbed?

Test beds are areas that offer opportunity to test new technology or methods in various environments (laboratory, simulated or real).

 

Our Role

The portal targets a large and diverse audience, which put high requirements on the content being structured, easy to access and understand. We developed a user friendly UI and UX for the logged in parts of the platform, such as flow of registration, editing content and publishing test beds.

 

We also developed features to increase activity on the platform, such as the use of comments, event calendars and automatic matching. Swedishtestbeds.com was also integrated with Envirobase, a database gathering information in Environmental tech and development belonging to IVL.

 

The project was conducted in cooperation with Edenvik.

Ansvarsområden

  • Programming
  • UI & UX
  • API integration
  • WordPress

In Detail

Setting up for Success

The target group of the web portal is large and diverse and includes employees at governmental organizations, schools, universities, private companies, foreign investors and a curious public. The content of the web portal is often niched, with a scientific focus and not always easily digested for someone not familiar with the scientific area.

 

For a successful project, the content has to be structured, easy to access and navigate. This also applies to the logged in parts of the web portal, that will be used by administrators and testbed owners.

mobile

swedishtestbeds.com menu swedishtestbeds.com screenshot of testbed page

Presenting Information

Great emphasis has been placed on presenting information and knowledge about testbeds and their operations in a clear and easy-to-understand manner.

We’ve created templates to help administrators and testbed owners format article and post content in nice and standardized ways.

 

Increasing Activity

To help the testbed owners spread information and reach their audience, there are also features such as the event calendar to help connect test bed owners and organizations interested in using testbeds.

It’s also possible to leave comments and engage in online discussions, allowing a direct communication between testbed owners and interested parties.

The matching feature help users find more testbeds relevant for them.

The testbed portal has also been integrated with Envirobase, an IVL database, to increase exchange of information in related areas.

swedishtestbeds.com menu screenshot of swedishtestbeds.com filtering testbeds

Search and Filter

To easily find testbeds, users may search by typing in keywords or using various filters such as categories and testbed types, as well as via a graphic map overview.

swedishtestbeds.com menu screenshot swedishtestbeds.com dashboard

A User-Friendly Tool

We developed user-friendly interfaces for administrators to handle approval and administration of users, comments as well as for creating testbeds and related content.

To decrease cognitive load and the perceived amount of effort needed to use the system, we developed various strategies to facilitate the input of testbed data and content. The goal was to remove any obstacles and facilitate creating good and informative testbed pages.

By setting up for success in this way, the testbed portal had 320% more testbeds registered already in the first week, compared to how many test beds the client had hoped would be registered.

When allowing for open communication and user-generated content, there’s always the risk of spam and trolling. By developing user-friendly interfaces, moderation is easy even for people without specific technical background or training. The web portal administrators can easily handle the system and keep the platform fresh and up to date.