UCD - University College Dublin

Introduction

University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland’s largest university, engaged Arekibo to consolidate and redesign its digital estate – uniting the corporate site with all of the individual College and School websites under a scalable information architecture and design.

The project was a key strategic initiative designed to enhance the online interaction between students, staff, researchers, and partners at UCD, creating a consistent and intuitive user experience across all websites.

Content Architecture

We began with a comprehensive stakeholder consultation process across the university, to:

• Audit and map the existing content architecture across the various websites.
• Deliver discovery workshops with the Colleges and Schools and the University communication team.
• Define the core business and communications needs to develop the website consolidation strategy.
• Evaluate and create a scalable information architecture that would support a unified web experience.
• Develop a roadmap for rolling out the consolidation and redesign.

The result delivered a web consolidation strategy that would provide a redesigned web experience for all stakeholders.

Designed for scale

With a new information architecture in place, we moved to design. Our goal was to create a visual and UX design system that could be consistently applied across all UCD websites, while allowing flexibility for different departments.

• A modular design system was created to align with UCD’s brand.
• Accessibility, responsiveness and performance were core priorities.
• We created a suite of reusable components and templates to support content teams, providing them with the flexibility to present content tailored to their specific needs.
• Designs were validated with stakeholders as we progressed.

We supported UCD's IT team in the development and integration of the new design into their CMS platform - TerminalFour.

Content Platform for All

The results delivered a scalable design and technology platform for all website management teams across the University, Colleges and Schools, with the ability to provide a cohesive, accessible and future-ready digital experience to their audiences.

A once-fragmented web estate has become a single, user-focused platform – reflecting the university’s global reputation and supporting its strategic goals for teaching, research, and engagement.