Open Polytechnic

Open Polytechnic website and enrolment form redesign

About the client

Open Polytechnic is a government funded tertiary institution specialising in distance learning. Open Polytechnic offers over 100 qualifications and 1200 courses in fields from technical and vocational training to higher professional and continuous learning to approximately 28,000 students each year.

The scenario

As a distance education provider Open Polytechnic’s online presence is key to their brand. Open Polytechnic’s website is a valuable channel to promote the qualifications and services they offer and provide students with a more intuitive online enrolment process.

In 2010, Open Polytechnic redesigned their website. The goal was to deliver an exceptional experience for current and potential students, and provide users with an easy way to find the information they were looking for.

Key to the success of the project was to ensure Optimal Usability had a very clear understanding of what users wanted, so they could optimise the website to deliver this.

“Optimal Usability helped us to create a website that delivers an exceptional user experience, and presents complex information in a manner that is easy and fun to use. Students are now able to easily find the information they need to make informed study choices.
They helped us to not only better understand the online needs of our users but also to gain an increased appreciation of how critical usability is to a website’s success. Throughout the process the team at Optimal were highly professional and fantastic to work with. They were extremely thorough in their work and produced high standard solutions that more than met our expectations.”

Christine Randall – Open Polytechnic

Our approach

The Open Polytechnic and Optimal Usability worked together, along with other suppliers, to firstly understand who uses the website and then deliver them a great online experience. The process was:

• Understand Open Polytechnic’s business including previous user research.
• Interview current and prospective students from across NZ.
• Create Personas to help communicate what typical students looked like.
• Create a robust information architecture. This was particularly important due to the diverse range of courses available (over 1200).
• Undertake interaction design on the main website pages and the entire enrolment process.
• User test the designs throughout design and development.
• Provide ad-hoc expert reviews and Google analytics support.

Outcomes

Optimal Usability helped the Open Polytechnic to:

• Clearly understand what our students wanted and needed from openpolytechnic.ac.nz
• Deliver a re-developed website with a clear and simplified information architecture focused on key user journeys and providing the right information at the right time.
• Develop a more dynamic online enrolment form which incorporates a visible step-by-step process so the user can track their progress.