OIA Website & Rebrand

The Higher Education Act 2004 required the appointment of an independent body to run a student complaints scheme in England and Wales. The Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) was chosen to operate this scheme, to which all universities in England and Wales must subscribe.

Their role is to review individual complaints by students against universities. They have no regulatory powers over universities and cannot punish or fine them but do make recommendations to them, to ensure student complaints are kept to a minimum.

The OIA online presence had not changed for almost a decade and was near impossible to update. The website required a refresh to bring it not only up-to-date visually, but to also put in place the technology to support the organisation. Latra won a six way pitch and began about developing a new brand for the OIA.

The website was also an opportunity to allow the OIA to manage complaints in a more efficient manner. This would allow the OIA to bridge the gap between student and universities, and at the same time reduce the management of handling multiple in-house systems.

We spent 6 weeks with the client, running branding workshops, in order to get an insight into the organisation. From this we produced several concepts and treatments of the brand. In parallel to the branding, we worked closely with key stakeholders to determine what they wanted to get out of the website and how best they could streamline business processes when dealing with student complaints.

We implemented a CMS, together with tracking and integration tools, that hooked into key systems within the OIA. The website allowed both students and universities to track and manage complaints via the new website.