IIE-UCE Research Platform
A research platform for an Ecuadorian economic research institute, with advanced CMS filtering across interconnected collections of projects, researchers, working groups, and publications.
Content
Overview
The Challenge
Our Approach
Technologies & Tools
Capabilities
About This Project
The Institute of Economic Research (IIE) at the Central University of Ecuador (UCE) designs, executes, and disseminates research across economic disciplines, with a focus on bringing critical and plural perspectives to the country's economic discourse. The Institute's work spans research projects, researcher publications, working groups, and ongoing academic outputs that need to be accessible to peers, students, and the broader public.
When the IIE-UCE engaged Menta, they needed a website that could organize and interconnect a substantial body of research content across multiple types: projects, researchers, groups, publications, news, and alliances. The previous site lacked the structural foundation to surface these relationships, and the new platform required advanced filtering so users could navigate the research catalog efficiently. The internal team also needed autonomy to update content without depending on a development team.
Menta delivered a full design and Webflow build with a multi-collection CMS architecture and advanced filtering across the research catalog. The platform launched with the leadership team that commissioned the project, who responded well to both the visual direction and Webflow's autonomy model for content management. Following a leadership change at the institute, the platform was later replaced with an internal WordPress build, driven by the incoming team's familiarity with that platform. The transition surfaced a lesson worth naming openly: a website is a long-term system, not a one-time deliverable. Platform decisions should account for both the budget for ongoing support and the continuity of the stakeholders who will operate the system as it evolves over time.
The Challenge
CHALLENGE 1
Advanced Filtering Across Interconnected Collections
The site needed to expose dozens of research projects, researcher profiles, working groups, and publications through a single search and filter experience, with the filter logic spanning multiple CMS collections simultaneously. Standard CMS filtering in Webflow operates on a single collection, which would have forced an artificial flattening of the data and a loss of the relationships between research outputs.
CHALLENGE 2
Architecting Multiple Interconnected CMS Collections
Research projects link to researchers, researchers link to groups, groups link to publications, publications link to projects, and news links to all of them. Defining the right structure for these relationships before any visual design began was critical. A poor architecture would have created circular references, inconsistent data, or impossible filter combinations once the site went live.
CHALLENGE 3
Design Precision in Academic Typography
The IIE-UCE leadership had specific requirements around typography, alignment, and visual treatment, reflecting the institute's academic standards. Reaching agreement on these details required multiple iteration cycles, and accommodating them without compromising the overall design system needed careful coordination.
Our Approach
Solution 1
Finsweet Attributes for Multi-Collection Filtering
The filter system was built using Finsweet's CMS Filter, CMS Nest, CMS Load, and CMS Tabs attributes in combination. This stack allowed filtering across collections at the same time, nested rendering of related items, and pagination of large result sets without page reloads. The final implementation handled the institute's full research catalog under one filtering interface, with each result correctly linked back to its source collection.
Solution 2
Architecture-First Build Process
Before any design or development began, the full data model was mapped: each collection, each field, each reference and multi-reference relationship, and the rules governing them. This document became the reference for both the design team and the Webflow build, eliminating mid-project changes to the data structure and giving the client team a clear view of how content would relate across the platform.
Solution 3
Iterative Design Review with Visible Rationale
Design decisions were presented in successive review rounds with the rationale visible for each typographic choice, alignment rule, and visual hierarchy decision. The client team was brought into the decision-making process rather than receiving finished proposals, which kept revisions focused and accelerated approval cycles. The final result reflects the institute's stated visual identity within a coherent design system.
Technologies & Tools
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Webflow
Figma
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