About UCDS

Better, simpler processes. Building a user-centered future.

What is a design system?

A digital design system is a comprehensive set of guidelines, components and tools that help organizations to create consistent and cohesive digital products. A design system typically includes everything from design foundations and components to best practices and code snippets to enable product owners at the organization to easily adopt and leverage UCalgary’s digital visual language.  
 
Interested in learning more about digital design systems? Here are some of our favourite resources: 

Design principles

Learn about the philosophy, values and principles that underpin the design process and ensure that every digital experience supports the university’s mission.

Read our design principles

Design standards

Explore our visual standards that help ensure a cohesive and seamless digital brand experience. Learn how governance supports alignment across digital solutions.

Review governance standards

UCDS roadmap

Designed and developed using agile methodology, our iterative approach and ongoing releases drive continuous improvement and scalability.

Check our release timelines

Why it matters?

The UCalgary design system drives us towards our Ahead of Tomorrow goals. By ensuring that we offer seamless, consistent and clear branded experiences across all digital touchpoints, we locate community at the centre of all we do. By offering a resource that is standardized, efficient and scalable we make our processes clearer, simpler, better than any other university. 

Consistency and quality

Consistency creates trust. By adhering to shared design principles and guidelines, we ensure every digital product is intuitive, user-friendly, and accessible, reflecting our values and enhancing audience confidence in UCalgary.


 

Efficiency and clarity

Pre-defined components and standards empower designers and developers to focus on creativity and problem-solving. This approach reduces redundancy and ensures faster, more efficient creation and maintenance of digital experiences.


 

Collaboration and innovation

A unified design system enables teams to work together, breaking down silos and fostering an environment where innovation thrives. By collaborating across teams, we push boundaries and bring bold ideas to life.


 

Scalability and future proofing

As our digital presence matures, a design system allows us to scale our efforts more easily, ensuring that new products remain consistent with our overall design language and adopters stay up to date with the latest visual language.

people in a network graphic

Building the foundations for tomorrow

Taking control of our digital future. Learn about how and why the UCalgary Design System was created. Discover how UCalgary is shaping the digital future with its first-ever unified design system. The UCalgary Design System (UCDS) promises seamless, branded, and user-centered experiences across hundreds of sites. Learn how this initiative redefines collaboration and excellence online—read more.

Read the story (coming soon)

Helpful info

The UCDS is available to any designer, developer, team or vendor that is producing a digital touchpoint that serves our core audiences. It is not intended to be adopted by research groups when representing their own academic content, rather it is intended to be used for products that are communicating at the institutional level and form key touchpoints in core journeys.

For example, systems such as the UCalgary web system, applications portals, CRMs and other tools used for marketing communications.

The Digital Experience Team, in the Office of Communications and Community Engagement, is responsible for building, maintaining, and scaling the UCalgary Design System. Digital Experience is a product team comprised of digital product designers, front-end developers, and user experience analysts.

We know there is digital talent throughout our University. If you would like to contribute or provide feedback to the design system, get in touch via digital@ucalgary.ca, we'd love to talk all things digital with you. 

The UCDS in its current releases is targeted towards web and webform experiences, it is not currently built to support experiences such as mobile apps, digital signage or data visualization experiences however our design foundations still apply across these typs of platforms.

To get started on the adoption journey, reach out to us via digital@ucalgary.ca and tell us about your project or platform. Every system, project or team has different needs. We're passionate about ensuring all our audiences experience first class digital touchpoints from the University, so we are flexible and fluid in the level of onboarding and support we can offer.

The design system is intended to supply everything you need to create a digital product or design a user interface. If you're looking for brand guidelines, assets, downloads, and more, visit the UCalgary Brand site.

We live to collaborate - talk to us anytime at digital@ucalgary.ca. 

The design system is governed via the UCalgary digital designs standards. It is the central teams job to ensure that the design system is compliant with the University's brand and accessibility standards, whilst it is the responsibility of the product owner of a system to ensure that it is following our design and brand standards as closely as possible. 

Across 2025 there are a number of key milestones

  • Alpha 1.0 - March 2025
  • Alpha 2.0 - May 2025
  • Beta 1.0 - July 2025
  • General Availability - September 2025

You can check our UCDS roadmap to learn more about each release and key milestones.

If you are looking for resources related to the UCalgary web system (UCWS), visit the UCWS knowledgbase and support site.