Create a standalone working-group recruitment campaign at /join

Context and problem statement

ADR-0069 establishes the public working-group expression-of-interest service, its data boundary, human review, privacy controls and canonical signup journey. ADR-0071 establishes the coordinated recruitment campaign and the content that must explain participation before asking for personal data. The implemented page currently sits at /spdtf/working-groups/join inside the Knowledge Base shell.

That placement makes the signup journey discoverable from the Working groups documentation, but it also subjects a public recruitment campaign to the global header, section navigation, breadcrumb, article wrapper and documentation rhythm. The page consequently reads as an unusually polished documentation page rather than a focused invitation to participate. Its long sequence of similarly styled cards also gives supporting explanation and the primary action comparable visual weight.

The standalone working-group presentation at /presentation/working-group-kickoff, first authored for Finance and Banking, demonstrates a stronger editorial hierarchy: large display typography, one principal idea at a time, immediate reassurance and a clear working-group promise. It is a presentation, however, not a suitable public signup journey. Its technical modelling story, 24-slide sequence, fixed viewport, presenter controls and deliberate empty space must not be copied into the campaign page.

OPDA therefore needs a standalone campaign surface that combines the presentation’s narrative confidence with the existing signup page’s complete form, privacy and accessibility contract. Its recruitment story must start with the industry problem and the value of professional judgement, not with OPDA’s modelling method.

Decision drivers

• Give public recruitment one short, memorable and trustworthy canonical URL.
• Let the campaign use the full viewport without inheriting documentation chrome.
• Recruit subject-matter experts and industry practitioners in familiar language.
• Explain the wider programme, its 2030 direction and SPDTF’s in-development status.
• Make the value of professional judgement and practical participation explicit.
• Keep the route focused on participation and human authority rather than on OPDA’s tooling or the use of AI.
• Preserve the approved form fields, validation, privacy notice, storage and human review boundary from ADR-0069.
• Preserve the campaign scope, promises and prohibited implications from ADR-0071.
• Remain visibly OPDA and consume the governed design tokens from ADR-0073 without requiring every campaign composition to look like a documentation component.
• Provide keyboard, reduced-motion and forced-colour support for every material part of the journey.
• Avoid scroll hijacking, pinned empty sequences, decorative parallax and a presentation-style requirement to click through the story.
• Meet explicit loading, responsiveness and stability thresholds despite any optional spatial rendering.

Considered options

Option A — Keep the nested Knowledge Base page

Continue to use /spdtf/working-groups/join with the global header, section navigation and documentation wrapper.

This preserves the current information architecture but keeps the public campaign visually subordinate to documentation and limits its composition.

Option B — Reuse the Finance and Banking presentation as the signup journey

Add the registration form to the 24-slide presentation and use its fixed-screen navigation.

This would reuse a strong visual language, but it would turn conversion into a long, presenter-oriented sequence and create a second copy of recruitment content.

Option C — Create a standalone editorial campaign at /join

Create one naturally scrolling, campaign-specific route that uses OPDA brand foundations, selected presentation patterns and the existing governed signup form.

Option D — Create a fully immersive WebGL experience

Build the entire page as a canvas-led, three-dimensional journey.

This would maximise visual novelty but make content, accessibility, resilience, performance and form conversion subordinate to a rendering technology. It would also recreate the dead-scroll and over-production risks already removed from the campaign.

Decision outcome

Choose Option C — create a standalone editorial campaign at /join.

This ADR is accepted. It authorises the local route, composition and quality contract; it does not authorise publication.

Amended on 7 September 2026 after the adversarial join-page review: the form now labels its contact field “Email address” and explicitly permits a work or personal address, matching ADR-0069 without changing any required field or eligibility rule. The page explains human review, conditional contact and separate onboarding before submission. Working-group cards say that activation selects a group and moves to the form, not that it registers interest; nothing is submitted until the form is sent. Structured 400 responses are translated through a fixed client-side field allowlist, never rendered as server-provided text, while stale privacy notices receive distinct reload-and-review guidance. Unknown, malformed and service errors retain the existing retryable message, and entered values are not cleared. No response-time, acceptance, membership or access promise is introduced.

Amended on 7 September 2026: the join identity links both shared OPDA and SPDTF headings to /. Join defaults are size 32, OPDA 87%, space below/between/above 18/0/9px, panel position −17/−23px, width 93%, item spacing 16px and theme-control offset 10px. The live controls and initial layout consume the same configuration. CampaignSectionHeading now owns all join section/panel/form-intro mini headings: one uppercase small-text role, an 8px title gap, and shared section/panel/compact title variants. Split introductions use a 32px gutter and stack below 64rem. The motivation and influence introductions use new *-landscape-{light,dark}.webp siblings: native 3:1 compositions displayed without cropping, never changes to the six working-group card images. Astra Max directed the built-in image tool to recompose the existing subjects horizontally, retain the Set 3 ink/watercolour palette and complete hands/heads, then recolour each approved light composition for dark mode without changing its geometry. Exports are 1536×512 WebP (203–225KB), proportionally resized from 2172×724 generated originals; all older assets remain. This is dated generation provenance, not a current watercolour default: the 10 September subject-led rule requires a unique concept and composition for each future placement, with no reuse of these card or section images elsewhere.

Amended on 6 September 2026: every recruitment section and inset panel follows the selected light or dark mode, including policy, cross-cutting experience, participation and trust. Light mode uses light semantic surfaces and readable dark text; dark mode retains its existing palette. Form availability, input and success states occupy one content column so hidden states reserve no empty grid rows, and the section ends with 32px before the footer. The standalone programme-status callout is removed; the programme and policy-context link remains. Motivation, policy, working-group, participation and evidence grids now use one CampaignCardGrid component with consistent 48–64px heading clearance and card geometry. Working-group cards read a 24px heading, 4:1 editorial drawing and exactly two expanded, justified paragraphs. The visible “I’m interested in” label is removed; one visually hidden native registration link covers the whole card, preserving a single keyboard stop and the existing group-selection behaviour. Form descriptions remain concise. Image set 3 in public/images/join/set-3/ contains sixteen local, lazy-loaded WebPs: eight colour-rich light/dark drawing pairs follow the selected site mode through one shared image component without changing geometry. Six 1200×300 pairs illustrate the working-group cards; one 1200×800 pair occupies the upper-right participation introduction beside “What you can influence”. Refined on 6 September 2026: this introduction uses a responsive 2:1 landscape crop in both modes, preserving the source assets and the working-group cards’ 4:1 geometry. Its desktop introduction uses 45:55 columns with a 32px gutter to bring the heading and illustration closer. The original photographs remain image set 1; the first drawings remain image set 2 in their versioned directories. The built-in image-generation tool edited set 2 with this direction: preserve each subject and composition; enrich the pen-and-ink/watercolour with OPDA yellow, petrol, violet and coral; adapt paper and line contrast for matched light and deep-ink modes. The initial fourteen exports were visually reviewed and optimised as WebP. Added on 6 September 2026: motivation-light.webp and motivation-dark.webp illustrate practitioners making change workable above the “Why take part” paragraph. This 1200×600 pair uses the same 2:1 media layout, 45:55 desktop grid and 32px gutter as the participation introduction. Both use CampaignThemeImage for mode switching. The built-in image tool generated the light composition and edited that exact image into its dark counterpart; both outputs were visually reviewed before WebP export.

Light-image prompt:

Use case: illustration-story.
Asset type: OPDA editorial watercolour website section illustration, light-mode original.
Primary request: illustrate why property practitioners should help make change work in real life. Show four people with varied ages and skin tones in a practical neighbourhood property office, collaboratively reviewing a small house model, an open floor-plan sheet, a tablet and a simple folder on a long shared workbench. One person points out a practical detail on the house plan while the others listen and compare their working documents. Relaxed, credible professional collaboration; the people and their judgement are the focus.
Composition: wide LANDSCAPE 2:1 panorama, ideally 1536x768. Eye-level/slightly elevated three-quarter view, shallow horizontal arrangement, waist-up people with natural hands, distinctive clear silhouettes. Modest suggestions of British terraced homes through the rear window. Keep heads, hands and central workbench safely inside the frame. Fill the width; avoid a tall composition or huge blank borders.
Style: expressive fine pen-and-ink contours, rich translucent watercolour with softly opaque gouache, subtle paper grain and pigment variation, professional editorial drawing, not a photograph.
Palette: cool off-white #F9F9F9 paper; deep purple #231F2F ink; substantial OPDA yellow/gold #FEC92B, petrol/teal #0E8478, violet #6C5BD4 clothing and objects, supporting rose/coral. Colourful but refined; no beige or sepia cast.
Constraints: no text, letters, numbers, captions, labels, logos or watermarks; no glowing diagrams, puzzle pieces, floating icons, handshakes, 3D or glossy rendering. This is one complete illustration, not a webpage or paired light/dark montage.

Dark-counterpart prompt:

Use case: style-transfer.
Asset type: dark-mode counterpart of the supplied approved OPDA editorial watercolour section illustration.
Input image: EDIT TARGET. Change only paper, ink values and pigment treatment. Preserve EXACTLY the four people, identities, natural faces and skin tones, gestures, furniture, model houses, papers, tablet, plant, rear windows and street, their arrangement, relative sizes, perspective, 2:1 landscape dimensions and framing.
Replace the cool white paper/surfaces with deep-purple #231F2F paper to every edge; use pale lavender or warm-white fine linework where needed. Retain substantial rich OPDA yellow/gold, petrol/teal, blue-violet and coral gouache. Keep natural readable warm skin tones, coloured pigment and fine handmade texture. Leave dark paper visible between strokes and washes. The result must sit naturally on an ink-coloured website and remain a vibrant, refined editorial drawing.
No composition changes, new objects, removals, text, labels, logo, watermark, night scenery, stars, fluorescent outlines, neon, glow, negative-image inversion, photography or 3D. Generate just this one dark illustration, not a paired comparison.

Fable’s ContributionRegister replaces the rejected contribution bands with one definition list in three pairs, using categorical violet, teal and magenta rules and markers on mode-aware semantic surfaces. All wording is preserved; one shared component owns desktop pairing, narrow-track stacking and both colour modes. Campaign sections share 32–48px vertical padding, with 32px inset boundary-panel padding, replacing the previous stacked 112–128px section clearances. The “What participation does—and doesn’t—mean” panel uses an editorial introduction followed by a balanced two-column boundary register that becomes one column on narrow screens. Renamed on 6 September 2026, with “Taking part” as its eyebrow, to describe the participation, sharing and authority limits in the panel rather than imply an application-review process. The separate “Before you commit” paragraph and its container are removed at the user’s request; the registration form and remaining participation boundaries are unchanged.

Amended on 27 August 2026: the public narrative is now SME-first, the semantic constellation is replaced by practical working-group cards, and the signup form follows the active light or dark theme without changing its service contract.

Amended on 28 August 2026: the campaign leads with the practical reasons that commercial operators, professionals, technologists and public-interest contributors would take part. Government policy and the legislative pathway provide a bounded “why now” context: they make the window to influence emerging property arrangements credible, but they are not the campaign’s sole proposition. The page must distinguish the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025’s general Smart Data framework from prospective property-specific arrangements. The standalone SPDTF status callout originally used here was removed in the 6 September amendment; the programme link provides the detailed policy context.

Refined on 30 August 2026: the hero retains its two-column campaign composition and presents its three influence points as a compact vertical sequence. The no-expertise message is primary reassurance rather than fine print, and every campaign section uses the hero’s shared content axis.

Amended on 31 August 2026: the canonical presentation was generalised for every domain working group while retaining its isolated visual-system boundary and established identity. The recruitment campaign may continue to draw on its tested narrative patterns, but neither surface becomes the other’s content or design authority.

Amended on 1 September 2026: /join now omits the standalone statement masthead and uses the same content-width hero header as the homepage, with its linked icon-and-name heading on the left and the design-system theme control on the right. The influence panel replaces ordinal markers with larger tree-shaken Lucide icons while its text remains the accessible source of meaning. Shared panel type, spacing and the gap below the organisation heading are governed by the campaign styles used on both routes.

Amended on 2 September 2026: the privacy and accessibility statements now use the same global Header component as /programme, with both side rails, breadcrumbs, comments and previous/next navigation explicitly omitted. The complete global menu remains visible but does not highlight a current Knowledge Base destination. The recruitment route remains standalone with its existing campaign hero header. This removes the legacy statement-only masthead while preserving the focused signup journey and shared footer. The standard app-main track is the sole width authority for both statements: their article, title, lead and content sections add no nested width or maximum-width, and the former two-column statement grid is replaced by full-track document flow. The wrapper also adds no vertical padding; the standard app-main spacing provides the sole top and footer clearance so those gaps do not stack.

1. Canonical route and route ownership

https://opda.org.uk/join becomes the sole public working-group recruitment and expression-of-interest route when this decision is accepted and implemented.

The privacy notice moves with it to /join/privacy. The former /spdtf/working-groups/join and /spdtf/working-groups/join/privacy routes are removed without redirects, rewrites, aliases or duplicate pages. All repository links, campaign assets and calls to action must use the new canonical route.

The route change includes the site navigation, route-migration registry, information- architecture baseline and every route- or path-pinned unit test. Updating those contracts records the new canonical hierarchy; it does not create compatibility routing for the former URLs.

https://opda.org.uk/accessibility becomes the canonical accessibility statement for the public site. It is a separate public service page delivered with the standalone signup journey, not an additional signup route.

The unchanged same-origin submission API remains POST /api/working-group-interest. Moving the public pages does not change the API, stored record, validation, retention, access or human-review boundary established by ADR-0069.

Public recruitment must not launch through another exception in the current authentication allowlist. Launch is sequenced after the separately governed removal of the site authentication gate, when anonymous access to /join, /join/privacy, /accessibility and the submission API can be verified directly. This ADR does not authorise an interim allowlist entry.

2. Public-service shells

The /join route does not use the Knowledge Base Layout or inherit its global header, section navigation, breadcrumb, table of contents, previous/next navigation or article wrapper. The /join/privacy and /accessibility statements use the standard Knowledge Base Layout and global Header, but set the shell to omit both side rails, breadcrumbs, comments and previous/next navigation.

The public-service route family supplies only the orientation and escape routes required for a trustworthy public journey:

• the official OPDA mark, linked to /;
• a discreet way to return to the Knowledge Base;
• a persistent but unobtrusive route to the registration form on /join;
• a clear route from /join/privacy back to the registration page; and
• a footer containing the privacy, accessibility and organisation links required for the public service.

The /accessibility page states the accessibility target, the scope and method of testing, known limitations, how to request an alternative format, how to report a problem, the responsible contact and the statement’s preparation and review dates. It distinguishes an accessibility target from independently verified conformance and does not claim compliance that has not been evidenced.

This is not a separate brand or design system. Both shells consume the official assets, semantic tokens, typography, controls, focus states and form primitives governed by ADR-0073. Campaign-specific spatial and editorial components must be added to the design-system documentation when implemented.

On 1 September 2026 the standalone shell adopted the shared SiteFooter rather than maintaining a campaign-specific duplicate. It preserves the required privacy, accessibility and organisation exits while adding the linked delivery credit. The join hero also adds the design-system ghost button as a transparent OPDA return control beside the theme control; this retains the minimal public-service shell without introducing Knowledge Base furniture.

3. Narrative structure

The campaign uses seven naturally flowing chapters rather than a long card sequence or a slide deck:

1. The practical invitation. The opening makes the case for shaping the information, guidance and services that the visitor’s sector may work with.
2. Why people participate. A concise editorial grid names commercial viability, workable professional practice, interoperable implementation and public-interest safeguards as distinct, legitimate motivations.
3. Why now. A compact policy chapter explains that government is pursuing home-buying reform and wider Smart Data policy, while property-specific arrangements remain prospective. It makes the opportunity to influence the practical detail clear without implying a settled mandate.
4. Where experience matters. Six plain working-group cards show who each group is for, while a cross-cutting invitation welcomes commercial, consumer, accessibility, regulatory and public-interest perspectives.
5. What participation can influence. A short sequence explains how participants define important realities, review proposals, challenge weak assumptions and test practical results.
6. Boundaries and trust. The page explains human review, authorised sharing and the limits of participation and standards authority.
7. Register your interest. The complete form is the final, visually distinct destination.

The page states that participants do not need data-modelling or technical expertise. Ontology, graph, mapping and internal candidate-lifecycle detail belongs in the Knowledge Base, not in the primary recruitment narrative. The page must not promise automatic membership, Microsoft access, voting rights, accreditation, endorsement, publication or standards authority.

4. Working-group choices

The six selectable working groups are presented as ordinary semantic cards using their public label and practical scope. Each card can carry its group selection to the registration form, but the form remains independently understandable and operable and its HTML inputs remain authoritative.

The campaign does not use invented domain definitions, candidate mappings, a common- boundary diagram or ontology terminology to explain the groups. Those details can be linked from the Knowledge Base for visitors who want them; they are not a prerequisite for deciding whether to participate.

5. Motion and interaction

The complete recruitment story is visible without client-side reveal logic. Motion is limited to existing design-system control feedback and must not delay or hide content. Reduced-motion preferences receive an equivalent static experience.

The page must not use scroll hijacking, a custom cursor, autoplay background video, decorative parallax, pinned scrollytelling or viewport-height empty bands. Visitors read by scrolling normally and may reach the form without completing an interaction.

6. Evidence and public claims

The page may show participating organisations, quotations or claims about real modelling outcomes only when their authority, wording and publication rights are recorded. It must not invent social proof or imply endorsement from a participant, trade body, government body or standards organisation.

The public story centres the industry problem, the value of professional judgement and the working groups. AI is mentioned once as a bounded drafting aid; it is not the campaign’s proposition and cannot make a draft official.

7. Registration and privacy

The registration form remains at the bottom of the page and retains every field, choice, acknowledgement and validation rule approved by ADR-0069. JavaScript is required for registration; this ADR does not require the campaign or form to operate when JavaScript is unavailable.

The campaign may provide a persistent “Register your interest” control and carry a context selection into the form. It must not hide required information in an opaque multi-step wizard, submit data before the visitor activates the form or change the meaning of registration.

The form area follows the active light or dark theme using semantic surface, text, border, focus and status tokens. Its control, validation, focus and error states must meet the design-system and WCAG contracts in both themes.

8. Performance and resilience

The semantic HTML proposition, reassurance and primary action render without an optional spatial or canvas dependency.

The production-build performance receipt records the audit tool and version, device and network profile, and the median of at least three runs against /join. The mobile lab profile passes only with Largest Contentful Paint at or below 2.5 seconds, Cumulative Layout Shift at or below 0.1 and Total Blocking Time below 200 milliseconds. These are the published “good” thresholds for Core Web Vitals and the corresponding lab responsiveness proxy.

When sufficient production traffic exists, the 75th percentile must also meet LCP at or below 2.5 seconds, Interaction to Next Paint at or below 200 milliseconds and CLS at or below 0.1 on both mobile and desktop. An optional visual enhancement that causes a failed lab or field threshold is disabled until the threshold is restored.

The complete proposition, group explanations, participation process, trust boundary, privacy link and form remain usable when motion is disabled.

Consequences

Positive

• Public recruitment gains one short and memorable canonical URL.
• The campaign can establish a stronger hierarchy without compromising the Knowledge Base shell used by standards and governance documentation.
• The campaign speaks to practitioners in familiar language and keeps technical modelling detail in the Knowledge Base.
• The working-group presentation contributes proven language and interaction patterns without becoming the public funnel.
• The existing form, privacy, storage and human decision boundary remain intact.
• The design remains OPDA-specific while allowing a more ambitious campaign composition.

Negative

• OPDA must maintain a small standalone shell in addition to the Knowledge Base layout.
• Campaign-specific components require their own responsive, accessibility and performance testing.
• Removing the former route without a redirect will intentionally break any existing external links to it.

Neutral

• This decision does not change the six selectable property-domain groups, campaign target audiences, form fields, API, storage, retention or onboarding process.
• It does not approve any quotation, logo, participant claim or draft as SPDTF standards content.
• It does not authorise deployment, campaign publication, LinkedIn activity or trade-body outreach.

Confirmation

The operator accepted the route, shell and narrative contract by explicitly requesting its implementation on 27 August 2026. ADR-0069, ADR-0071 and ADR-0073 are amended in the same decision change. This ADR remains accepted, rather than implemented, until all of the following are true:

• /join and /join/privacy are the only public page routes for the signup journey;
• /accessibility exists as the canonical public accessibility statement and the standalone footer links to it;
• the site authentication gate has been removed through its own accepted decision, with no interim join-route allowlist exception, and anonymous access to all three public pages and the submission API is verified;
• the former nested routes are absent without compatibility routing;
• all internal campaign and header links use /join;
• site navigation, the route-migration registry, the information-architecture baseline and all path-pinned signup, infrastructure, design-system and IA tests use the new routes;
• /join, /join/privacy and /accessibility do not render the Knowledge Base header, sidebar, breadcrumb, table of contents or previous/next furniture;
• the official OPDA mark provides a clear route home, /join/privacy provides a clear route back to registration, and the campaign footer exposes the required privacy and accessibility links;
• every working-group choice and form control is usable by keyboard, touch and pointer;
• the page contains the seven decided narrative chapters and no scroll-driven reveal sequence;
• the complete page remains understandable with motion disabled;
• reduced-motion, forced-colour, 320 CSS-pixel reflow and 400% zoom checks pass;
• the recorded three-run mobile performance audit meets the LCP, CLS and TBT thresholds in this decision;
• the existing form fields, privacy acknowledgement, validation, API contract and human review behaviour remain unchanged;
• unauthorised logos, quotations and endorsements are absent;
• make test and make build-data pass; and
• DESIGN.md and the live design-system documentation are reconciled with the implemented route and components in the same change.

Relationship to other decisions

• ADR-0069 remains the authority for signup scope, form data, validation, privacy, storage, retention and human review. This ADR amends its canonical public page routes, presentation layer and prior no-JavaScript requirement.
• ADR-0071 remains the authority for campaign scope, recruitment channels, public promises and measures. This ADR amends only its canonical signup URL and campaign-page composition.
• ADR-0073 remains the authority for OPDA brand foundations, semantic tokens, controls and accessibility. It records the standalone campaign as an intentional shell exception and the resulting components are documented in the design system.
• ADR-0079 removes the site authentication gate while preserving independent service boundaries; this campaign does not add a route exception or interim allowlist.
• The generic working-group presentation remains an isolated presentation surface and a source of tested narrative patterns. It is not the canonical recruitment page or a second design-system authority.