A future-oriented digital learning platform
How do you bring together over 13 subject sites, tons of specialized content — and an organization full of dedicated and skilled advisors — into one easy-to-use and sustainable digital platform?
For RVTS East, the answer was to partner with Increo. As a government-funded centre of excellence in charge of violence, traumatic stress and suicide prevention, they needed a solution that could strengthen both accessibility, structure and professional authority on digital surfaces.
The result? A powerful and flexible knowledge platform combining a learning portal, website and academic archive — marking the start of a new digital era for the dissemination and sharing of knowledge in mental health.
Background
RVTS East (Regional Resource Centre for Violence, Traumatic Stress and Suicide Prevention, East) plays a key role in strengthening the competencies of professionals working with people in vulnerable life situations. They offer courses, resources and guidance for healthcare professionals, educators, child protection and other professional communities. These are professionals who are truly passionate about the subject and the people they help.
They operated 13 different websites and it was through an extensive bidding competition that they became a customer of Increo.
For Increo, this is an incredibly exciting and rewarding project, and we are only in the first round. This is going to get better and better. Why is this so exciting for us?
There are at least 3 reasons:
- RVTS has a super important community mission. They are supposed to help the helpers. They should ensure that professionals have the expertise and the latest and best research in the spinal cord when meeting people. People who may be going through the worst moments of their lives. There is so much research on these topics and the subject enthusiasm and pride of RVTS is something we want to be a part of.
- RVTS East is a project where insightful work and design methodology really make a difference. By working structured with Design Thinking, we have not only raised the quality of solutions — we have also found smarter paths to the goal. When we put the user at the center and dare to prioritize hard, we can actually create more value for less — both professionally and financially.
- This project touches upon disciplines we have both extensive experience and a strong commitment to — particularly health, welfare and digital learning. There are areas that matter and that make extra sense in everyday work. When we get to use our expertise to make knowledge more accessible to those who really need it, we know that our job makes a difference.
Dette har vi gjort
Besøk nettsted
The Challenge
RVTS East stood in a complex digital everyday life. No fewer than 13 different websites were in operation — each with its own publishing solutions, design expressions and technical distinctiveness. This structure had grown forward over time, as a result of valuable professional initiative and commitment from various parts of the organization. But overall, it led to a fragmented and unwieldy digital infrastructure.
The content of the solutions was of high academic quality — there was a lot of good and important material — but it was difficult to find out. Both the search functions and navigation across the sites had limitations, and users often had to know exactly where to look. The result was that knowledge that could have made a difference risked becoming invisible.
Over time, it had also built up technical debt - that is, the sum of previous technical choices that, when viewed in context, make it demanding to further develop and operate the solution efficiently. This is quite natural in knowledge organizations with high activity and many simultaneous needs. But that makes it all the more important to collect, clean and renew.
Content was often duplicated, maintenance required considerable effort, and there was little room for innovation or further development. Together with RVTS East, we identified several parallel needs that reinforced each other:
- Audience customization:The platform was supposed to meet the needs of everything from school employees and health professionals to psychologists and managers in civic services -- professionals with vastly different roles, information needs and digital prerequisites.
- Search and Availability: Users struggled to find out in the amount of subject matter, courses and resources. The search tools were weak, the menu structure untidy, and the path to the right information too long and uneven.
- Professional management: With so many systems and publishing tools in circulation, it was demanding to ensure quality and consistency of content. RVTS Øst's academic communities spent a lot of time on technical operations and adaptations — time that could have been spent on professional development.
- Universal design: As a public player, it was a clear goal that the platform should be accessible to everyone — including people with disabilities. However, the previous solutions did not live up to the requirements of WCAG 2.1.
- Reporting: As a government-funded centre of excellence, RVTS East has a responsibility to document the impact of its work. In a fragmented ecosystem of websites, it became difficult to get an overview, gather data and just as difficult to showcase which measures actually produced results.
- Future-proofing: There was no common technical strategy for the digital presence. Several sites were built on outdated technologies with limited support for integrations and further development — and that hampered both innovation and long-term planning.
The need, therefore, was about far more than “creating new websites”.
RVTS Øst needed to consolidate its digital presence in one comprehensive platform — a solution that could reduce technical complexity and support a complex and socially critical discipline. It should be flexible, accessible and user-friendly — but also convey RVTS Øst's professional authority and commitment.
And most importantly, the platform was supposed to strengthen, not replace, the practice-oriented dissemination. The advisors in RVTS Øst are closely involved in the field, and human communication — through lectures, courses and mentoring around the country — should continue to be a mainstay. The digital platform should be a complement: a place where knowledge is available when the user needs it, at their own pace and on their own terms.
The solution
To address the challenges faced by RVTS East, we started where we should always start: with the users. We attended full-day seminars, interviewed special advisers, conducted extended workshops, and spent time getting to know the organization — how they work, what audiences they reach, and what role they play in the professional field.
In parallel, we worked on quantitative insights: We analyzed search history, navigation patterns, and content logic. It gave us a clearer picture of what users are actually doing, looking for -- and not finding.
RVTS East met us with openness, accessibility and a clear commitment to make this a success - and that allowed us to work more thoroughly and purposefully. It was an insightful work that both provided direction and created shared understanding.
The insight pointed unambiguously in one direction:
The solution did not lie in modernizing and further developing 13 separate sites. It lay in bringing together — in one comprehensive, flexible and powerful platform that could accommodate both the breadth and depth of RVTS Øst's professional work.
This stage of insight became absolutely crucial. It didn't just give us answers — it simplified and improved the whole further process. In retrospect, it emerges as a school example of what data-driven business development is actually all about: Using insights - both qualitative and quantitative - to make wise and sustainable choices.
In developing the platform itself, we took a number of strategic and technical steps to balance three key factors:
Flexibility, allowing the platform to grow with the field of expertise.
Quality, so that user experience and content are managed safely and professionally.
And sustainability, so that the solution is efficient to operate and easy to develop over time.
A flexible and forward-looking core platform in Umbraco:
We chose Umbraco as a publishing platform — a solid and open source solution that combines high editor friendliness with great flexibility. The solution provides RVTS Øst with a robust, forward-looking platform with an intuitive backend and a good foundation for further development. This is a tool that makes it easy to publish, structure and manage content — even in an organization with many different professional environments and roles.
Integration with Learning Platform (LMS)
Digital training is an important focus area for RVTS Øst, and together we have started work to integrate a learning platform (LMS) into the overall digital solution. After thorough research, we have recommended Moodle — a flexible and proven platform for e-learning — as a foundation for further development work.
The aim is to provide academic communities with a safe and efficient venue for putting together training courses — from short video modules and quizzes to more comprehensive professional programmes. In addition to this, a personal “My Page” is now being worked on, where each individual service practitioner can get an overview of their own progression, course participation and relevant professional resources.
All this happens in close and agile cooperation, where we develop and prioritize on an ongoing basis — in line with needs and capacities. We are well underway, but the scope for opportunity is still large, and we look forward to exploring it further together with RVTS Øst.
Combination of shelf and tailoring
At Increo, we have extensive experience in combining standard technology with tailor-made solutions. It's about understanding both the users and the technology — so that the platform provides freedom and control, not restrictions. By building on solid, established systems such as Umbraco and Moodle, and complemented by custom integrations and interfaces, we lay the foundation for a solution that is both cost-effective and scalable — without compromising on quality or user experience.
This approach also provides an important advantage: The platform is built for development. This is only the first phase of a larger collaboration, and the technical and strategic foundation we have put together makes us well equipped to build further.
Modular structure and flexible architecture
All functionality and content are built into modules — components that can be easily reused, moved or customized. This gives RVTS Øst a high degree of editorial freedom, and makes it easier to maintain and further develop the solution. When new needs arise, you can build on the existing structure — rather than starting over.
Technology and consulting — hand in hand
Throughout the project, we have worked closely with RVTS Øst. We have been more than a technical supplier — we have acted as a sparring partner and advisor, and have been as concerned with strategic development and change management as with technology. Together we work nimbly, exploratively and purposefully — building a platform that evolves in line with the organization's ambitions.
The result
With the new platform, RVTS Øst has received a powerful boost — both as a digital resource and as a professional authority. Where users previously had to know and navigate between a number of separate websites, now everything is contained in one place: the new rvtsost.no.
The solution serves as a digital knowledge hub for professionals working with violence, traumatic stress and suicide prevention. Now they can delve into subject matter and find relevant resources in one place. These disciplines were previously distributed across 13 sites — creating confusion among users and weakening the digital integrity of RVTS Øst as a sender.
Today, the content is:
- Collected and structured in one holistic information architecture
- Accessible and searchable across themes and audiences
- Recommended and context-sensitive, so that users receive specialist material adapted to their needs and situation
Previously, the user had to know that sites like utveier.no, snakkemedbarn.no or psychosocialbereskap.no existed — and what they contained. Now they only need to know one thing:
That RVTS East is the place you go to when you need academic quality in this field.
Much of the recipe has been to acknowledge the obvious: RVTS East has strong professional communities and skilled advisors. This is not a solution that is going to replace them -- quite the contrary. There are people who develop high-quality professional resources. Technology should not compete with it - it should amplify it: make knowledge accessible, supplement dissemination and provide more access, faster and easier.
“Now service providers can update at their own pace, on their own terms — backed by a solution that both inspires and informs.”
By understanding both the subject and the users, we have developed a tool that not only meets today's needs, but can also grow in line with RVTS Øst's social mission. The platform makes it clear who is speaking: RVTS Øst now emerges as one holistic, academic sender — not a collection of scattered initiatives.
The new digital infrastructure:
- makes it easier to update, share and maintain academic content
- Strengthens and strengthens the brand RVTS as a national competence carrier
- makes room for personal learning courses adapted to individual needs and progression
Right now, the special advisors in RVTS Øst are actively working on filling the knowledge platform with new subject content. This is — and shall be — a living solution that is constantly updated, expanded and developed in line with the field of expertise. Especially in the coming months, you will see that the amount of content is growing rapidly and that the site is constantly becoming more complete, useful and rich.
At the same time, the platform is built for continuous development — both professionally and technically. With excellent search functions, professional recommendations, personalized learning overview and integrated course platform, RVTS Øst now has the tools to meet the future needs for training, support and interaction.
For us at Increo, this has been a project with deep meaning.
It hits right at the core of what we're passionate about -- health and welfare, learning portals and design-driven innovation. Here we really got to apply both our methodological approach, technological insights and insight-driven way of working -- and it's still only the first round.
This is a project that will continue to grow — and we look forward to continuing it.
