Canadian Museum for Human Rights
A foundational, strategic concept that would drive the web initiative and reflect the museum’s needs

Canadian Museum for Human Rights

In developing an overall interactive strategy and website design for the new museum, it was clear to bv02 that CMHR required a digital hub that would promote respect, encourage reflection, and increase dialogue and action within our communities.

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) is a national museum located in Winnipeg, established by the Government of Canada in 2008 to increase awareness and understanding of human rights within our diverse nation. When bv02 was chosen to develop an overall interactive strategy and website design for the new museum, it became clear that CMHR required a digital hub that would promote respect, encourage reflection, and increase dialogue and action within our communities. bv02 worked closely with the museum to develop a foundational, strategic concept that reflected their needs and would drive the web initiative. This concept is dubbed “Me, We, Everyone”, and is intended to engage website users, for those physically in the museum and beyond in the greater community.

This notion of engaging website visitors was crucial — we had to ensure that those web visitors who never actually visit the museum could connect with the museum and each other in relation to the topic of human rights. With this in mind, bv02 considered how human rights connected Canadians both on an individual and on a larger group level, and made recommendations on how technology such as social media could be used to bring those connections to the forefront. We further refined the concept and how it would be applied technically, theoretically, and in future rollouts. As such, it was layered into the web design, infrastructure, wireframes, and strategy.

To get to this concept, bv02 was contracted to provide strategy and planning activities in two phases: functional design and interface graphic design. During the functional design phase of the project, we reviewed business and technical requirements, produced information architecture, produced a functional design model and provided insight in selecting appropriate technology. bv02 identified gaps in the findings and presented plans on how to capture additional business requirements. An Information Architecture was developed, based on CMHR’s four enterprise content management architecture systems, to encompass business requirements and properly align information flow and business systems. The result of the functional design phase was the production of a design model for the web presence that aligned to business requirements, promoted workflow modelling, enabled program and service delivery, supported the bilingual website and aligned to usability and accessibility standards.

The interface graphic design phase included a series of activities to define the graphic design of user interfaces for the website. Activities included developing options for the look and feel of the user interface for the key and distinct levels of web pages. The proposed solution, based on the “Me, We, Everyone” concept, respected and aligned to design standards adopted by CMHR. bv02 performed user testing for the selected graphical user interface, documented findings and made required modifications.The resulting site design allows Canadians to understand human rights and their own relationship with this subject, within their personal social network and with the general public.

At its close, this interactive web design project enabled CMHR to significantly move forward their planning and development for the museum’s website in relation to the corporate mandate and strategic objectives, while providing a larger vision for the museum’s engagement plans.

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