LIACC institutional website — project memoir

This is the English companion to the main Portuguese report. It summarises the project for international reviewers. The full version, with all sections and rationale, is available at /report/ (PT-PT).

• Course: Scrum & Roadmap Labs for Digital Transformation (UMaia, 2025/2026).
• Addressed to: Prof. João Almeida (regente), Prof. Carlos Alves, Prof. Samuel Anjos.
• Student: Gabriel Lima.
• Original group: eight members (see §3 · Method).
• Client: LIACC — suggested by the instructor in class; accepted by the group.

Classical Scrum for planning (Product Vision, prioritised backlog, 8 epics, 6 sprints, Definition of Done, RACI) recorded in Notion; continuous Kanban for execution. Solo execution is acknowledged openly: the group agenda could not be synchronised, so the author delivered the work alone, preserving the Notion hub as the original group planning artefact and documenting how each Scrum obligation was met.

The author acted as a technical consultancy: the choice of stack is a supplier responsibility, not a client one. The delivered stack is a dependency-free Python static-site generator (a Next.js track was explored first, then dropped to keep a single, auditable source of truth). It was chosen for performance, SEO, accessibility, maintainability, and full mastery by the delivery team. The content architecture is fully portable to WordPress + ACF + WooCommerce + Rank Math, and a migration plan is detailed in §9 of the Portuguese report.

• 123 static HTML routes, all returning HTTP 200, zero console errors.
• Tokenised design system with dark mode and font-size accessibility.
• Content model with Person ↔ Publication ↔ Project ↔ Area ↔ Thematic ↔ Unit cross-links.
• Original blog posts on contemporary AI topics (illustrative editorial section).
• Shop with {_N_PROD} products, cart, and demo checkout.
• Authenticated user area with reading list, authors followed, topics, newsletter preferences.
• SEO audit with practices implemented and prioritised recommendations.
• Six-stage marketing funnel strategy with cohort-specific activations and E-Goi integration plan.
• Bilingual (PT-PT / EN) site-wide toggle across the public-facing pages.
• Publications section mirrored against the canonical LIACC source at liacc.fe.up.pt/publications.

The individual component is a strategic digital-transformation proposal that builds on the collective MVP: LIACC Companion, a persistent conversational agent backed by a shared memory. Its thesis is that the primary purpose of an academic site is to build and signal scientific reputational capital, which converts into three returns: funding, talent, and partnerships.

The Companion offers three modes over one memory — Discovery (recommendations from interests, history, and recent output), Digestion (~30-second TL;DR and contextual cross-links), and Conversation (RAG over the corpus, citing source pages). An SEO blog drives acquisition and registration-as-utility drives retention, feeding the same E-Goi funnel documented in the marketing deliverables.

Delivery is staged over 18 weeks in five phases (UX/UI & SEO infrastructure → editorial blog → registration & account → RAG → Companion surface), with measurable targets (≥12% sign-up rate, ≥40% sessions touching a box, ≥3,000 organic visits/month, ≥10 qualified contacts/month) and a candid risk/mitigation matrix (RAG hallucination, GDPR of persistent memory, editorial sustainability, institutional adoption). Crucially, Phase 1 corresponds to the collective MVP described here — the foundation on which the RAG and the Companion stand. The full treatment is in §10 of the Portuguese report.

The WordPress (40%) and E-Goi (10%) components of the rubric are not natively implemented. The retrofit plan (detailed in §9 of the Portuguese report) estimates 2–3 additional focused days, reusing the entire content model, design system, and funnel strategy that already ship.

The full narrative, with every design token, architectural decision, and rubric mapping, is available at /report/ (Portuguese).