Munich French Connection

For the non-profit organisation MFC

The association Munich French Connection helps and represents the Francophone community in Munich. For several years the association has both encouraged Franco-German exchanges and helped Francophones living and working in Munich integrate into everyday life. The association called on us and I worked together with the agency La couleur du zebre, and freelance developer Pierre Rudloff, in order to redesign the interface of the site to make it clearer and easier to use.

Keep it simple

The Munich French Connection site consisted of three quite seperate tools:

• The Guide: A Wiki powered by MediaWiki featuring useful information about life in Munich
• The Forum: Powered by CMS PhpBB, a space for exchange on different topics
• The Blog: News from the association and on entertainment in the city of Munich

The association found that users of their existing site could not find the information they were looking for in the different sections of the site. Each section was ‘independent’. With La couleur du zebre I consulted on a new structure for information on the site including:

• Information grouped by topic, rather than by tool
• A unified graphic identity across all the website tools
• Cross-referencing informationg where relevant: e.g. on the ‘Accommodation’ page of the guide, to show housing ads from the forums.

Technologies

Together we created: a new portal for the site, powered by a bespoke PHP web application which recovers the information from each tool via its API, a new logo and a new graphic identity accross all tools, and a front-end integration with a SASS framework which is then adapted to tool.