My City of Migration: myCOM

Cities of Migration: From diversity – strength

Ryerson’s Cities of Migration project posed Kobayashi + Zeitguys a problem;

Building Inclusive Cities is a learning platform that facilitates education around a core urban development issue in our time; Cities that aspire to a cosmopolitan reputation on the global stage need to build diversity into their winning formula.

Along with efforts to sell their particular “brand” and to compete for investors, new industries or tourism, cities are investing in welcoming strategies to attract immigrant skills, talents, and energies. City leadership is essential in helping the wider community to support the idea that a vibrant economic, social, and cultural base can generate the quality of life that international populations seek, and all residents enjoy.

People generally need to see an issue to recognize it. Where to start? Dramatic change over time in urban diversity has become such an issue.

How to make diversity and inclusiveness part of how people think about their cities?

Ryerson University, the Global Diversity Exchange, and Ted Rogers School of Management in Toronto first needed to gather data to illustrate the picture in a very personal, practical way. So, how do we make a survey compelling, and really – how boring are statistics?

Enter the power of collaboration

We gathered together the minds at Ryerson, examining what their objectives were in a workshopping environment. Kobayashi + Zeitguys examined how to structure and stretch the user experience (UX) design and information architecture (IA) into a WOW experience for website visitors.

Working from first principles, we had to determine how to engage the visitor, and lead them through a user experience that would have the visitor interested and informed by the process and the result.

 

Inclusivity and diversity for cities - Toronto WordPress web development and information design

How it Works

Register and rank your city one ‘module’ at a time, as you complete one dimension of diversity. Each module completion triggers an email, showing you your results, compared to your initial appraisal, and compared to the population of results overall.

Wordpress responsive design Toronto - information design migration diversity

Kobayashi pro WordPress development team information design charting graphsAfter completing all eight modules, you are presented with a chart showing your results on ten different dimensions of diversity. The scoring that underpins the survey questions, and how your answers compare to overall results is compiled by the database of survey answers.

These informative charts are all generated on-the-fly by code purpose-built by our WordPress development team. We used dynamic SVG charts that recalculate and reformat for each individual result, and even respond to the device screen you are viewing on.

The Bigger Picture

When asking questions to survey audiences, the prime challenge is to keep the audience engaged with the questions; data quality is of utmost importance to useful and complete sets of information to work with. The topic itself may not have been the most compelling on the face of it; but we worked with the teams involved to formulate an approach that made the visitor journey and user experience design rewarding.

We started with individual inclusiveness issues and broke them down into bite-sized chunks, providing just enough information to tease the next step. All too often, websites will break the ‘less is more’ rule in an attempt to stuff more information into a defined space.

Instead, the entire experience is geared to educating, while keeping the visitor fully engaged in their discovery process. Generating surprising insights about inclusiveness is key to creating realization, and recruiting people to a ’cause’, to become inclusivity advocates.


It was a pleasure to work together with all the teams at the Global Diversity Exchange, Ted Rogers School of Management, and Ryerson University.

If you feel your organisation could use a thoughtful approach to helping define your audience, identify the issues of ideal customers, and provide them a distinctive experience  –  call us! We are happy to contribute to the discussion.