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Arma

Designing a Digital Campus Where Human Rights Theory Meets Practice

Project

Responsive bilingual website: programme and streams, activities, network, faculty, blog, master's papers, online application and project timelines

Industry

Education

Services

ARMA homepage in a browser between an Arabic thematic unit page and a project timeline on a phone, over deep teal

Impact

Democracy and human rights are lived differently in Beirut, Birzeit, Tunis and Rabat. ARMA, the Arab Master's Programme in Democracy and Human Rights, was built to study them side by side. Run by the Political Science Institute at Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut, and part of the EU co-funded Global Campus of Human Rights, it brings together faculty from more than 12 countries and alumni from 33.

The website had to carry all of it: admissions desk, course catalogue, research archive and alumni noticeboard, for applicants from any country with a political science or geopolitics background, and for lecturers and partners. Mindflares designed and built one platform for them all, then redesigned it in a second iteration, in English and Arabic, on any screen.

The mandate:

Make a demanding, multi-track programme easy to grasp at first glance
Turn interest into applications with a guided online flow
Give fieldwork, research, and alumni stories a home that keeps growing
Read naturally in English and Arabic, on every screen

Challenges

ARMA is not one product but several living ones: a degree with two tracks and four streams, a calendar of field visits and classrooms spread across the region, a growing archive of research and projects, and an admissions process with real deadlines. Each part had its own audience, its own vocabulary and its own owner. The challenge was to make them feel like one place.

Methodology

We treated ARMA as a structure problem before a visual one. Before drawing a page, we mapped who comes to the site, what each visitor needs to decide, and which existing content could answer them. That map became the sitemap, the sitemap became reusable templates, and the templates grew into a design system the team could keep extending. Because Mindflares also rebranded the programme and developed the website, design and build moved together across two iterations, so every layout was tested against real content, both reading directions and real screen sizes, from 1440 desktops to 375 phones.

Five-step ARMA process: Empathize, Define, Architect, Design, and Build and Evolve

Takeaway

Designing for a human rights programme is really designing for trust and for memory. Applicants need to trust that the path is clear, partners need to trust that the work is real, and the work itself, from a field visit to a project timeline, deserves to be remembered. ARMA taught us that the strongest academic websites behave less like brochures and more like living archives, and that a bilingual, responsive system keeps them open to a whole region. The same thinking applies to universities, NGOs, foundations and any institution whose impact lives in its content.

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Testimonials

Client delight stories straight from the source

Ali Al Ahmadi

Director, Digital Business Channels at Mobily, Saudi Arabia

''A highly professional and reliable team. Through their strong understanding of our business and user needs, Mindflares delivered a high-quality bilingual UI/UX revamp and scalable Design Language System. Their expertise and close collaboration improved usability, consistency, accessibility, and development efficiency across Mobily Business.''

Kassem Baalbaki

Chief Information Officer at SMC Healthcare, Saudi Arabia

''Working with Mindflares has been a professional and collaborative experience. Their team demonstrated a good understanding of our objectives and provided valuable insights to support the continued enhancement of our digital patient experience. Overall, it was a smooth project and timeline was fully respected”

Carole Alsharabati

Founding Partner of Siren Analytics and Siren Associates

"Mindflares is one of those companies that makes magic happen for your products. It starts with a three-word request and ends up with a solidly grounded UX/UI design that conquers and charms the users. Their agility, commitment, and creativity are impressive. They are the kind of partner you need to ace your objectives and succeed in your business."

Wissam Youssef

Co-Founder and General Manager of CME Offshore

"Partnering with Mindflares has been an inspiring and fruitful journey and still is. Mindflares’ approach to business combines high ethics, transparency, and communication skills which were keys to our success."