What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?
The government in their infinite wisdom have decided we can’t sell the way we always have done and expect them to subsidise them. Our students now need to pay the full whack or get a student loan. But to get a student loan, they have to say they’re doing a degree. So the website is toast. Oh, and can you cut the time to convert from 2 years?
This is the first time I got to work on something with a truly toasty budget. Which largely meant I got to lead a team that delivered a truly user centred design project.
It also meant a weekly drive up to Milton Keynes, but we can’t have everything.
The client more than made up for it. He had a vision, we had a set of tools. He told us not to worry about the rest of his business, that was his problem to deal with. Focus on solving the problem. DREAMY.
We really went for it. We carried out over 200 hours of user research and usability testing sessions with people.
We also had a habit of reducing at least one person for every day of testing we did, to tears. Not in a bad way, but we made people cry when they realised they could chase a dream people had spent their lives telling them they couldn’t have.
In return, they told us they needed to know what it would be really like studying for a degree with them. We needed to manage their expectations every step of the way.
What we launched was a website that was massively different to how it had been. It used language that was easy to understand. It guided you through everything you needed to know to make a choice.
We cut the time to convert from 2 years to 6 months.
We did however create another problem we couldn’t have seen. I went back to do some work for them a few years later to help them solve that problem.
Converting so fast meant some students weren’t fully prepared for the pace and demands of studying. Students were dropping out. So I worked with them to introduce a bit of friction.
What I loved
Leading a transformation of this size was an absolute dream. It gave me confidence in having a voice and being able to use it in a democratised way.
I loved hearing the insights from the users, and actually using the insights to affect the design output. I got to go back long after I’d left the agency I’d done the original work for and found out what had happened.
I also loved that I wasn’t an employee of the client so I could bring my fresh eyes to the problem, but equally the two teams together felt like family.
Interesting factoid
Open University used to sell modules that made up to a degree. Each module was pretty cheap, something like £600. Then the government stopped subsidising them in the same way so you could get a student loan to cover the cost. This meant they had to start selling degrees that were made up of modules. It seems like it's the same, but it was why we had to redesign the whole front end of the website.
We carried out 250 hours of user research and usability testing over 9 months. On each day of testing, we made at least one person cry. Why? read on.
You can study with the OU if you sucked at school. If you got no GCSEs or no A-Levels. When people in the testing session realised that meant them, we turned their pipe dreams into a possibility. The tears would come when they would ask "what, even me?" and we'd simply say, "yes, especially you." Never underestimate the value of user research.