The DINA Project
Canada’s national biological collections were scattered across outdated systems—some dating back to the ’90s, others held together by spreadsheets. The DINA Project set out to unify them under a single, open-source platform. Our team was brought in to lead the user experience design, working directly with collection managers, touring facilities, and untangling years of overlapping processes and inconsistent data models.
The result was a simplified, scalable system built around one core entity: the Material Sample. By flattening the data structure and designing flexible, role-specific workflows, we made it possible to manage millions of records in a single, consistent interface. The project not only brought clarity to a highly complex ecosystem—it laid the groundwork for a national platform that will serve researchers and institutions for years to come.
