Halesowen College
Halesowen College enjoys a reputation for high standards and student achievement. It has an outstanding local campus providing an exceptional learning environment.
Halesowen's website is a marketing tool. All students considering enrolling will visit the site and it will inform their choice.
The previous version of the site was well built, with good technical accessibility tools (including access keys and text size options) but structure, navigation, signposting and branding were poor.
The College wanted to significantly improve the look, feel and user experience of the website. The new site was to be built in-house from graphical assets created through a design and development process intended to ensure the ongoing integrity of the website.
Route
IE Design Consultancy was appointedby Halesowen College after a 3-way credentials pitch.
Background
Halesowen College have an excellent reputation locally and a large intake each year. Their local full time in-house website developer built and managed a robust, database driven website, based on a Cold Fusion back end. The College was looking for a highly creative agency to work closely with the in-house technical skills to build a new website.
Brief
The visual style should look open, authoritative and accessible. The existing corporate guidelines must be used as a foundation but will be developed to extend the brand consistently to the web medium. The look should demonstrate the College’s emphasis on contemporary, modern ways of learning and should have a high quality of finish. School leavers are typically experienced web users and highly discerning in terms of quality of presentation. The quality forms part of the decision making process.
In order to be deemed successful the new design had to:-
Create a cleaner, fresher, more contemporary look
- Provide user-centered home page signage (clearly differentiating routes for different users)
- Streamline current navigation
- Create an opportunity for Halesowen to improve page content
- Make courses more accessible
- Be appealing to Halesowen College’s core business constituency 14-19yrs
Outcome
Three different designs ranging from conservative to radical, tested at the Summer Festival. Overwhelmingly positive feedback on approach to site structure, signposting and visual style.
Success of interface design led on to production of more interactive content including animations and the soon-to-be launched (in more ways than one) 'Bernie the Rat' game.
Service Offering
- User centered information architecture
- Design of look and feel, navigation and page layout
- Accessibility consultancy
- Design and build of interactive animations
- Design and build of a bespoke online game
Timeframe
6 weeks from kick off to design sign off. Game development 4 weeks.
“We needed a new look from our website – something clear, colourful and contemporary; something dynamic and easy to navigate – but we had too many integrated systems linked with the website to be able to hand over the entire project.
What we needed was a partnership, a true collaboration, where an innovative design concept could be developed and delivered in a format that enabled internal web build while leaving scope for future advances.
It was an unusual brief and, without a sensitive approach to customer care and support, it could have spelled disaster. From the opening meeting to the sign off, IE Design Consultancy demonstrated an honest and intelligent approach to problem-solving coupled with design flair and excellent technical knowledge.”
Sarah Weston, Communication & Web Liaison Manager, Halesowen College
If you're interested in speaking with Halesowen College about our work or would like to find out more please contact us for further details