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The appearance and ease of use of the service also received praise from the trial learners. Active development work will continue in the future.
The Opin.fi service shared by higher education institutions has received excellent results from recent accessibility, information security and usability trials. The trials were conducted in early 2025 prior to the launch of the service.
“We wanted to gain an understanding of how the service has developed since the beta phase and what its maturity level is,” says Annu Ruuhisalmi, Product Manager of the Digivisio 2030 project.
The trial focused on new features of the service. It was exceptionally gratifying to discover that there were no critical issues with information security or accessibility whatsoever. What might be the explanation for such good results?
“Certainly one factor is that these issues have been important right from the beginning of the Digivisio 2030 project,” Ruuhisalmi says.
Very good feedback on accessibility
Both trial rounds were conducted by Digivisio partners. The information security trials were conducted by Solita, while the accessibility audit was conducted by Annanpura.
“We wanted to use external experts to get an impartial assessment of how we meet all the criteria.
In accessibility trials, experts surveyed the operation of the service, for example, using a screen reader program. The most serious issues, which would prevent the service from being used with different aids, were not encountered.
“The trial participants said it was the first time in their trial career that they experienced something like this. The number of findings was low in other areas, as well.
The results were also good for information security. There were no critical-level problems and very few issues encountered at lower levels. The most important of these have already been rectified,” explains Ruuhisalmi.
“We wanted to make sure that it was safe for users to use the service before launching it.”
Users impressed by the look and usability of the service
During the first half of the year, the Opin.fi service also reviewed the usability testing conducted by Selko Digital. In the service, six trial participants interested in continuous learning were able to perform various tasks in the service, such as searching for offerings that interest them.
“They tried out the service independently, constantly telling us how it was going.
According to Ruuhisalmi, users quickly figuring out the whole idea of the service. They praised it for being easy and pleasurable to use. The educational offering themes added to the service after the beta phase, such as ‘sustainable development and growth’, also proved popular. Using these themes to find offerings was natural.
“The look of the service also received high praise for its clear, uncluttered layout.
Small suggestions for improvement were also given: some learners were looking for buttons in a different location than where they were actually located. It was also hoped that that uniform price information would be available for all offerings. One of the bigger suggestions for improvement was to make it possible to use the service to register for studies and pay for them. According to Ruuhisalmi, this is indeed planned for the future.
Good results come from long-term work
Opin.fi has also undergone accessibility, information security and usability trials previously. Even though new features have been constantly added to the service, the number of testing observations has dropped. For example, the search accuracy and other problem areas that had previously elicited comments from users were no longer suggested for improvement.
“It was really nice to see that we made progress in these areas,” Ruuhisalmi says.
She feels that success is the result of long-term work. For example, accessibility of the service was already defined as a key requirement in the early stages of Digivisio, as higher education institutions want to serve different learners. This also helped the partner company conducting the trials provide tips on how to fix the problems encountered in previous rounds.
“I believe that one of the reasons behind the good results is that we have been able to learn from them.”
According to Ruuhisalmi, rectification of the more minor issues will continue in 2025. Information security, accessibility and usability remain key elements in development of the Opin.fi service. However, the idea is that they will be promoted in the future as part of daily activities rather than separate trial rounds.
“We are trying to make them more part of normal development work,” Ruuhisalmi sums up.