Ngāti Ranginui Education Platform

Māui Studios Aotearoa Ltd was commissioned by Ngāti Ranginui to design and develop a website that serves iwi members, hapū, whānau, and the broader public. Ngāti Ranginui is a significant Tauranga Moana iwi with deep whakapapa to the Bay of Plenty, and their digital presence needed to reflect the mana, identity, and purpose of the iwi while serving the practical needs of their community - accessible information, organisational communication, and a digital home that people would actually use.

The project was a major digital undertaking - approximately 36 weeks of design, development, and cultural alignment - and designing a website for an iwi is categorically different from a corporate or commercial build. An iwi website carries whakapapa: decisions that might be purely aesthetic elsewhere carry cultural weight here - how the iwi is named, how whakapapa is organised and presented, which imagery is used and what it represents, and how the site feels to a whānau member visiting for the first time or the fiftieth.

Accessibility across generations was a significant constraint. Iwi communities include kaumātua who may have limited digital familiarity, rangatahi who are digitally fluent and accustomed to fast, visually driven interfaces, and whānau in between - and the site needed to work genuinely well for all of them. The 36-week duration reflects the sustained work required to design, build, populate, test, and deploy with appropriate cultural care, including content decisions that could not be rushed and approval processes that reflected the tikanga of the iwi.

• Core Deliverables: Website - design system, content architecture, development, content population, deployment
• Audience: Iwi members, hapū, whānau - people of all ages and varying digital literacy; also wider public, researchers, partner organisations, and media
• Format: Website design and development - custom design, CMS-based content management, integration of existing content and systems
• Production Duration: Approximately 36 weeks
• Key Requirements: Cultural appropriateness and mana of the iwi reflected in design, accessibility across age groups and devices, ease of use for non-technical iwi administrators
• Service Connection: Websites and Apps, Visual Design, Strategic Communication, Cultural Transmission

Māui Studios developed a visual design system rooted in the identity and whakapapa of Ngāti Ranginui - using design language, colour, and imagery that reflected the mana of the iwi without defaulting to generic Māori visual clichés. The content architecture was developed collaboratively, mapping the information most important to iwi members and the pathways different visitors would use, so the structure served the community rather than a conventional web template.

CMS implementation gave iwi administrators direct, manageable control over their own content without ongoing developer involvement - a deliberate decision to support iwi autonomy and reduce long-term dependency on external technical support. Accessibility was built in from the outset: device compatibility, clear typography, legible layouts, and intuitive navigation across the full range of the community's digital access and experience.

Māui Studios delivered a fully operational, culturally grounded website - giving Ngāti Ranginui a digital home with mana, and administrative autonomy over their own digital presence.

Intended Outcomes

• Provide Ngāti Ranginui with a mana-affirming digital presence that reflects the identity of the iwi
• Make it easier for whānau, hapū members, and the broader public to access information about Ngāti Ranginui
• Support iwi communication, organisational visibility, and community connection through a reliable platform
• Give iwi administrators direct control over their own content without ongoing external dependence

Broader Impact

• Demonstrates that iwi digital infrastructure can be built with the same ambition and quality as any major institutional project - iwi need not accept lower-quality outcomes
• Demonstrates Māui Studios' depth in iwi-facing digital work: the cultural sensitivity, structural thinking, and technical execution to build a presence that genuinely serves a Māori community

Usage and engagement data are held by Ngāti Ranginui.

• Phase 2 digital development - member portal, whakapapa access tools, digital archive integration
• Cultural knowledge layer - te reo Māori content, whakapapa visualisation, or oral history access
• Mobile app companion - a native app extending the website for community members on mobile devices
• Integration with Digital Marae concepts - connecting the web presence to broader digital heritage infrastructure
• Model development for other iwi seeking to build digital presences

• Ngāti Ranginui. (n.d.). Ngāti Ranginui. https://ngatiranginuittw.co.nz/
• Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga. (2023). Indigenous data sovereignty and cultural heritage. https://www.maramatanga.ac.nz