Challenges

The Council of Ontario Universities is responsible for administering UHIP—health insurance for international students, teachers, and their families. Enrolment in the program is mandatory for all international students while they study in Ontario. UHIP hired Intent to develop a new brand identity, as well as a new website. Their previous logo was difficult to read online, broke accessibility rules, and wasn’t appropriate for their target audience, made up of international post-secondary students. 

Their existing website was cumbersome, overly wordy, and not focused on the end-user. It lacked clarity, and made an already potentially daunting (and mandatory) experience even more difficult. UHIP’s concern was that an inaccessible, dense website could potentially result in students, teachers, and their family members not receiving the services they need.

Insight

After consulting with stakeholders, as well as the team at UHIP, we knew that the new logo had to be approachable, easy to recognize, and modern, to appeal to a predominantly young adult audience. With previous concerns about AODA compliance and accessibility, we knew that the new design required special attention to accessibility. We also had to pay special attention to any wordmark that we created, as it had to be bilingual (UHIP/RAMU).

For the website, our design had to be versatile: the Homepage, and pages about how the program works (“Primary Pages”) had to be clear, concise, and informal, while providing vital information. As users drilled down to more specific use cases, we had to allow room for information-rich, and legally-worded pages that were still easy to navigate. The website needed to fill a number of different needs seamlessly.

Solutions

We designed a wordmark for UHIP that was playful, approachable, and immediately recognizable. The ‘U’ included the healthcare cross, indicating that it was a service tied to the health system. The cross itself also served to create a smiley face, which allows for a serious, and important product to stay friendly and unintimidating. 

The website was designed with the user in mind. We front-loaded the website with immediate information on what UHIP is, how it works, and what to do if there were any concerns. We included a search bar immediately below the homepage banner with suggested topics, allowing the user to not only find out what they are looking for, but also help them formulate their questions using the prompts below. In addition to explaining the program, process, and how to obtain further information, we included testimonial stories, making the site even more approachable. 

The result is an easy to navigate website with more and more detailed information as needed by the user.