Services Provided
Web Design & Development / Content Strategy
Home Schooling with Wisdom
In the fall of 2014 Wisdom Home Schooling, a home school organization out of small town Derwent, Alberta approached us to redesign their website. They outgrew their old site and it was time to update the design and functionality because they had so many home schooling families that they needed to support throughout Alberta. After meeting with their general manager in person, they decided it was time to move forward and hire us for the project.
Website Features
Other than updating the design, the finished website would need the functionality to support a school that serves hundreds of families Alberta wide. Some of the features to be included on the site included:
- An event registration system where people can sign up and pay for events like: camps, BBQ’s, workshops, conferences, and other social gatherings.
- An online course registration system so parents can sign up and pay for courses at their convenience and their child’s pace.
- A blog that wisdom would use to communicate news and other important information to their many stakeholders.
- Resources like downloadable forms, audio content, videos, and articles that their students and stakeholders could reference at any time.
Making Sense of Everything
With so many of the students, staff and parents needing to access the website on a regular basis we knew that before designing anything for the site, we needed to make sure the information was organized in a clear and consistent manner. Once we understood Wisdom’s goals, we implemented an information architecture strategy that organized all the current and future content in an easy to follow sitemap that would set the direction for the rest of the website’s development. Once approved, we presented Wisdom with mock-ups for each section of the site so they could review it and provide feedback so it would be as user-friendly as possible for everyone accessing the site.
Sharing Wisdom’s Vision
Once we had a clear idea of the form and function of the site, we started brainstorming on the design. As humbly as we can say it, this is when Wisdom’s choice in hiring Holds Worth Design really paid off. When hiring a web design company, an organization needs a company that understands their vision so the designer can express that vision through the website’s design. With the creative director choosing to home-school his own children and our developer being home-schooled himself, we truly understood Wisdom’s vision and passion for giving parents control over what is taught to their children.
The Design: The Value of Home Schooling
Using their logo as the basis for the branding, we took Wisdom’s classical approach to education with the design and emphasized the topics of math, literature, the arts and other classical subjects. The whole design is meant to convey the idea that home schooling can provide a place where children can learn through fun, freedom, discovery, and play. This is of course in comparison to learning through the traditional institutional settings where you see a lot of order and timetables that dictate the student’s time and stagnate creativity.
Some of Our Best Work Yet
A portfolio is a place to feature your best work and to demonstrate your capabilities as a web design and branding company. After having the pleasure of working with Wisdom’s staff to plan, implement and launch their site, we were very excited to be able to feature their site in our portfolio because it truly demonstrated our capabilities. We definitely had a lot of fun designing and developing the site, but our biggest reward was the understanding that we helped in increasing Wisdom’s online presence and ability to provide more home schooling families with the high quality support that they need.
Testimonial
“ I just went to the WISDOM website to look for something and … WHOA! It's all bright and shiny and sparkly and new! It looks fantastic! Wow! From the photos on the homepage (rockets and butterflies!) to all of the details - a great look! Congratulations to everyone who put this together.
PS - I found what I was looking for too! ”
Paul van den Bosch,
WISDOM Facilitator