Key Nucleus Enhancements Delivered in 2024
Key Nucleus Enhancements Delivered in 2024
As the 2024 awards season kicks off with the Television and Craft Awards, our focus at BAFTA Media Technology has been on delivering continuous enhancements to Nucleus—our end-to-end awards entry and judging platform. Despite being a smaller team our output and development velocity have been remarkable and we thrive on turning around rapid feature rollouts while maintaining a scalable, user-centric product.
As Product Manager, my role balances strategic vision and iterative improvements, ensuring Nucleus meets the evolving needs of its users—whether it’s addressing stakeholder feedback, refining workflows, or integrating new technologies. Throughout the year, we’ve rolled out a range of impactful updates that optimise data management, streamline user workflows, and enhance the overall experience for awards entrants and administrators alike. Below is an overview of some of the key developments delivered this year, demonstrating how each feature has contributed to a more robust and efficient platform.
One of the most significant projects in 2024 involved a technical overhaul of how data is saved when multiple users access the same entry form concurrently. Previously, the silent auto-save functionality wasn’t designed for simultaneous editing, causing potential data conflicts and integrity issues. To address this, we leveraged WebSockets, inspired by their successful implementation in our Jury module, enabling real-time data synchronisation and user alerts. I played a pivotal role in defining the project scope, collaborating on the system architecture, and refining user flows to ensure a responsive and efficient multi-user experience.
Designing the tagging system required careful architectural planning to serve the diverse needs of our user base. For users managing large numbers of entries, efficient categorisation and filtering were key. Meanwhile, those handling fewer entries needed a simple, non-intrusive interface. We built the tagging feature to be modular, allowing users to easily opt-in without complicating the UI for others. User persona analysis and usability testing were integral in ensuring that this upgrade added value while maintaining a clean and intuitive interface.
Designing the tagging system required careful architectural planning to serve the diverse needs of our user base. For users managing large numbers of entries, efficient categorisation and filtering were key. Meanwhile, those handling fewer entries needed a simple, non-intrusive interface. We built the tagging feature to be modular, allowing users to easily opt-in without complicating the UI for others. User persona analysis and usability testing were integral in ensuring that this upgrade added value while maintaining a clean and intuitive interface.
Integrating natural language processing (NLP) was a pivotal enhancement to the data validation process. This new functionality leverages machine learning to evaluate textual responses against admin-defined benchmarks. By feeding “good” and “bad” examples into the system, the AI performs multiple passes to generate an average confidence score, guiding admins on entry acceptance or prompting further review. This technical solution was architected to complement human decision-making, reducing admin workload while ensuring robust oversight of the entry content.
To address communication inefficiencies in Nucleus, we transitioned from a scheduled email scanning approach to a dynamic, event-driven system. By building a trigger-action framework, we automated real-time notifications based on specific user actions and defined criteria. This not only modernised the way Nucleus handles automated communications but also laid the groundwork for extending trigger-based functionalities beyond email—such as user role updates or data progression—improving the responsiveness and adaptability of the system.
Previously, actions like account creation and entry assignments relied on manual password sharing and external communications, posing security risks and inefficiencies. We revamped this process to automatically trigger email notifications, allowing users to securely set their own passwords and receive real-time updates for important actions. This enhanced both the platform’s security posture and streamlined workflows for users, reinforcing Nucleus’s commitment to a secure and user-friendly experience.
The challenge of ensuring secure file sharing across different permission levels led to the development of placeholder media items. Nucleus supports a range of media uploads, from video to images, but varying access rights required an innovative approach to maintaining security without sacrificing transparency. By architecting a system that visually indicates linked assets without exposing the content to unauthorised users, we were able to deliver a robust solution that balances user experience with stringent security protocols.
To help admins manage a high volume of award-related invoices, we developed an automated archiving feature. Upon an award’s completion, a back-end script is triggered to archive invoices, removing them from the main interface while maintaining searchable access for legal or financial auditing. The technical approach involved reworking our database queries and enhancing our indexing to ensure that archived data remains accessible without cluttering active views.
Form-building is central to Nucleus’s functionality, and enhancing this area required an upgrade to both the “Admin Preview” and dependency-tracking capabilities. Admins can now edit questions directly within the form, with dynamic UI components revealing linked dependencies and improving the clarity of question pathways. This enhancement greatly optimises form-building, reduces admin workload, and improves workflow efficiency, particularly for more complex, multi-stage forms.
Enhancing Nucleus’s multilingual capabilities was a significant focus, particularly for the Paris Peace Forum, which required dual-language support in English and French. We expanded our translation management by allowing administrators to directly input copy for multiple languages, moving beyond AI translations to ensure native-level quality. The UI was built to support seamless toggling between languages and align with system architecture for future multilingual support, including Welsh for upcoming Cymru Awards.
In line with our commitment to accessibility, we developed a solution to convert SRT subtitles to the VTT format used by our media player. This enhancement was technically challenging, requiring the integration of open-source conversion scripts and the handling of UK broadcast timecode formats. The end result is a seamless workflow that enables a broader range of subtitle formats without disrupting video playback.
Following an accessibility review, we aimed for comprehensive WCAG compliance, successfully achieving a perfect 100% score on all pages. Improvements were made to colour contrast, keyboard navigation, and screen reader compatibility, with each change rigorously tested. These adjustments not only enhance accessibility for all users but also ensure an inclusive and refined user experience across the platform.
Security improvements were a critical focus, with measures like increasing minimum password length and blocking weak passwords from being set. Rather than enforcing overly complex password rules, our approach centred on usability, integrating secure workflows that allow users to reset passwords easily while bolstering overall system protection against common vulnerabilities.
We addressed mobile usability by redesigning how tables display on smaller screens. While Nucleus originally relied on scrolling tables, these were not ideal for mobile users. By developing adaptive content-area displays, we optimised how data is presented on various devices, making the user experience more consistent and accessible, regardless of screen size.
These updates represent just a fraction of the progress made this year to continually enhance Nucleus and elevate its value for users and partners. From leveraging AI for smarter workflows to improving accessibility and data-sharing capabilities, we’ve taken significant strides in supporting BAFTA’s evolving needs and those of our other partners. As a team, we are always looking ahead—continuing to build upon these achievements, developing more robust functionalities, and adapting the platform to future challenges. I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished and look forward to driving further enhancements that support user needs, optimise workflows, and solidify Nucleus’s role as a leading solution for awards management.
