Designing for diversity

Now one of Canada’s top research institutions, University of Manitoba is also western Canada’s first university. Established in 1877, the campuses are located on original lands of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

This statement isn’t history: it’s an active acknowledgement of the Indigenous community University of Manitoba is connected with in the present day. It’s why visitors to new umanitoba.ca now see this territorial acknowledgement as a banner statement on the new site.

When the University of Manitoba undertook the process of redesigning its massive digital ecosystem, moving to a new content management system, and launching their new brand, it was with this underpinning: “the full diversity of the University should be engaged, reflected, and celebrated.”

Web accessibility is sometimes seen as a checklist: if a web experience can meet compliance standards (like WCAG 2.1 AA), that’s understood as a win. And yet what’s often missed is what these standards empower. When a site is designed with accessibility as a priority, those with assistive technology, like screen readers, can navigate through the online experience more easily. This means non-sighted web users can listen to the pages, and users with colour blindness can still appropriately differentiate text from images.

All of our projects are designed with accessibility in mind, and umanitoba.ca was no exception. A high level of rigour in this area means that all learners and staff members can contribute meaningfully to the University of Manitoba ecosystem.

Some design teams create static templates or one-off pages, launch it on a CMS, and call it a website. That doesn’t work for a complex organization, such as a university of the scale, size and seriousness of the University of Manitoba. They weren’t about to launch a new website that simply stayed static. They needing a way to flex and grow over the next months and years.

We conceptualized and built a robust, scalable design system. In-house admins can build new sections and pages from beautiful components that are on-brand, code-reviewed, and tested for accessibility compliance. If a small iteration is needed—or even if a whole new digital property needs to be added—the entire digital ecosystem has the ability to grow while upholding the high standards of the University.

The depth and breadth of stakeholders our team engaged during this redesign was purposeful, even as it created a daunting challenge. Named the “Next Generation Web Experience,” the engagement phase swept through the university in an all-encompassing process of listening and involvement.

Domain7’s distributed and in-person teams of researchers met with over 100 members of the University staff, spanning internal departments, IT leaders, and a host of content editors.

But we didn’t stop there. As the news release reads, “more than 1,000 prospective and current students, as well as staff and faculty members, participated in workshops to explore possible website features, information architecture, wireframes, intranet and content lifecycle. Close to 700 provided further feedback through extensive online testing.”

Today the University of Manitoba’s web property has become the digital hub for serving their diverse audiences, internal and external. The world-class site continues to evolve and grow, helping position University of Manitoba as a powerhouse in Canada’s education landscape.