University of Flensburg: Corporate Design, Accessibility, and Institution-Wide Communication

Designer, University Communications·2022·6 people·3 min read

Development and implementation of institution-wide accessible design standards, establishment of sustainable production processes, and the successful rollout of a unified visual identity and social media presence.

Overview

The University of Flensburg comprises numerous institutes, each with its own communication needs and established design practices. The internal communications team managed the visual representation of the entire institution, requiring extensive coordination across stakeholders with differing expectations.

Problem

The university lacked unified, accessible design standards. Materials and presentations did not meet accessibility requirements, and each institute created its own visuals, resulting in inconsistent communication and branding.

Constraints

  • Highly decentralized institutional structure with diverse stakeholder needs.
  • Strong attachment to existing design habits and resistance to change.
  • Budget constraints ruled out managed search services.
  • Coordination with multiple internal institutes and external print vendors.

Approach

Maintained and further developed the corporate design for print and digital media. Designed brochures, flyers, posters, annual reports, and event materials. Reconceptualized and launched the university’s Instagram presence with new visual material. Developed and implemented a concept for sustainable production using local vendors and eco-friendly materials. Introduced accessible design standards including a barrier-free font and visual guidelines, supported by internal presentations and stakeholder communication to encourage adoption.

Project deliverables

Styleguide

Developing a practical style guide that adapted the existing corporate design to meet the new requirements.

Responsibilities:
  • Style guide for use by professionals and non-professionals alike
  • Templates

Concept for accessible communication

An accessible communication strategy—such as for engaging with students with disabilities—has been developed and rolled out.

Responsibilities:
  • Presentation to the university executive board
  • Research and dialogue with representatives of disadvantaged groups
  • Introduction of a special font
  • Optimisation of all media and information

Internal project management

Implementation of a new solution to professionalise internal processes and communication between marketing, public relations, social media and design.

Responsibilities:
  • Intranet solution with Kanban
  • Various sub-projects and pipelines
  • New approval workflows
  • Digital asset management system including a digital styleguide

Design disciplines

  • Branding
  • Print
  • Social Media
  • DAM
  • Illustration

Result & Impact

  • 45% improvement in click-through rate
    Search Conversion
  • Under 100ms (down from 800ms)
    p99 Latency
  • 10,000+ QPS (up from 1,000)
    Query Capacity
  • Reduced by 60%
    Zero-Result Searches

Search went from being a pain point to a competitive advantage. The merchandising team can now tune relevance without engineering involvement. The faceted search and autocomplete features have significantly improved the shopping experience.

Learnings

  • Relevance tuning is an ongoing process, not a one-time setup—build tools for non-engineers to iterate
  • CDC is powerful but adds operational complexity—invest in monitoring and alerting
  • Search is a product, not just a feature—dedicate resources to continuous improvement
  • Elasticsearch cluster management requires dedicated expertise

Relevance Tuning Journey

The initial Elasticsearch deployment actually performed worse than the PostgreSQL search for some queries. We spent significant time tuning BM25 parameters, field boosting, and function scores.

The breakthrough came when we incorporated click-through data into relevance scoring. Products that users actually clicked on after searching got boosted, creating a feedback loop that continuously improved results.

Operational Lessons

Running Elasticsearch at scale taught us a lot about JVM tuning, shard management, and cluster topology. We had several incidents early on due to GC pauses and unbalanced shards. Building comprehensive monitoring and runbooks was essential.

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