Intranet (2012+)
As well as coding the intranet at Derwent Living, I stepped up when we decided it needed a bit of character if we wanted people to view it as something they wanted to use, instead of being told they had to...
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Who is that red robot?
Need someone to got through all the news from the past week to write a round-up article? Someone to remind people they need to log off early every Friday, so that rent can be processed? Someone to nag that the fridges need checking for out-of-date food?
Well we did, so we created the system robot. Every automated announcement and auto-generated article (Hot last week, Starters and leavers for last month etc.) is "written" by this guy:
Although the robot was just a bit of fun to ease people in to the new intranet, every article had to have an owner ID and so he had to have a valid user account (albeit one internally labelled F for Fake, not A for Active). This meant people could follow his posts, so I had to add a function where admins could post messages from his account (as well as his automated stuff) and his followers would see them.
He even got a whole blog post introducing him, and his avatar updated over time to fit in with changes to the style of staff photographs (because of course Steve set up a photographic studio in the board room to give people stunning photos!)
The Robot says...
Could do with a few more pictures of me, but otherwise cool story. Seriously, I'd give it a thumbs up - if I had thumbs.
Your pal System.
Toppers and logos
Having done timed logos and "toppers" for various other sites, it seemed logical to add something similar to the intranet. (For some version of "logical" that made sense to me at the time.) Anyway, there's all sorts of Red Nose Day antics, that Spectre logo, Back to the Future day... the toppers below show the sort of thing that comes up from time to time.
Sports
Time of year
The speech bubble is usually filled with the countdown timer to the Christmas party, and if you click on him (on the intranet) he shoots off the screen and the instructions for getting to the party load. Rudolph's nose flashes. There's even moving snow that reacts to where the user's mouse pointer is on the screen.
Supporting special causes
Miscellany
Logos for Rememberance Day, the release of Spectre (James Bond film), and the Russian World Cup.