Web reviews
We review the latest websites
Website, Royal Albert Museum World Cultures
The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter has relaunched its world cultures website as a responsive site. It isn’t entirely clear why world cultures needs a separate site to the museum, or how visitors get to it from the main website.
But the simple design and clear navigation mean the new pages are an improvement on the main site, which is quite busy, and I understand the museum intends to roll this branding out in due course.
The world cultures site allows users to explore the collections by various curated themes, such as second skin (the use of barkcloth designs), metals in Africa and Yoruba art and culture.
They can also read about the different collections by continent, although this information is fairly brief and accompanied by just one or two photographs. There is also a blog.
The purpose of the website is to showcase the museum’s excellent world cultures collection, but the design doesn’t make it easy to do this. The “objects” option, under “themes” in the top menu bar, brings up all of the collections online, and users can filter the results by collection type.
There is also a direct link to the objects area from the landing page. I would like to see the search function on the website include more filters, as there is a lot of material online and it is not much fun scrolling through pages and pages of it.
Looks-wise, this website delivers in spades, and I suspect that a lot of work has gone into the back-office system management, but from an end-user’s point-of-view, the functionality could be improved a little.
Website, Discover Me
No frills – just a site that does its job
Launched last month, the Discover Me website covers 11 heritage sites in East London and Essex run by the Thames Chase Trust. The homepage has high-quality photographs of each venue, with a snappy description available when you hover over.
From there, users can find out more about the museums, including access information, and browse through a selection of objects from the collections – but unfortunately, opening times aren’t available. A map on the website displays all the venues.
The website lists events taking place across the sites and suggests itineraries for people who want to visit more than one site in a day.
Discover Me is functional and well-designed; there are no fancy features on offer here, and the site is probably the better for it.
Website, Warsaw Rising 1944
Is the rich content of this website enhanced by its deliberately shaky text panels?
Warsaw Rising 1944, the winner in the cultural institution category of the 2015 Webby Awards – also referred to as the Oscars of the internet – is more of an experience than a museum website.
Produced by the Warsaw Rising Museum in Poland, the website was developed alongside an exhibition in the museum to mark the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Rising – 63 days of fighting by the Polish Resistance Army against the Nazi occupation in 1944.
Warsaw Rising 1944 presents a history of the city from 1918.
Film, historical maps and archive photography, as well as animated statistics, examine how the “Paris of the North” fared under both totalitarian rule and in a new era as part of the European Union.
The content is fascinating, but the journey it isn’t always easy. I struggled to move beyond chapter one pre-war Warsaw, until I tampered with the URL and discovered the rest of the site. The design could also be problematic for anyone with a sight impairment as the text panels deliberately shake, and elsewhere white captions laid over pale images cannot be read.
For anyone interested in learning about the history of Warsaw, this is a valuable resource. But they will need a great deal of patience to overcome its lack of usability.
The Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter has relaunched its world cultures website as a responsive site. It isn’t entirely clear why world cultures needs a separate site to the museum, or how visitors get to it from the main website.
But the simple design and clear navigation mean the new pages are an improvement on the main site, which is quite busy, and I understand the museum intends to roll this branding out in due course.
The world cultures site allows users to explore the collections by various curated themes, such as second skin (the use of barkcloth designs), metals in Africa and Yoruba art and culture.
They can also read about the different collections by continent, although this information is fairly brief and accompanied by just one or two photographs. There is also a blog.
The purpose of the website is to showcase the museum’s excellent world cultures collection, but the design doesn’t make it easy to do this. The “objects” option, under “themes” in the top menu bar, brings up all of the collections online, and users can filter the results by collection type.
There is also a direct link to the objects area from the landing page. I would like to see the search function on the website include more filters, as there is a lot of material online and it is not much fun scrolling through pages and pages of it.
Looks-wise, this website delivers in spades, and I suspect that a lot of work has gone into the back-office system management, but from an end-user’s point-of-view, the functionality could be improved a little.
Website, Discover Me
No frills – just a site that does its job
Launched last month, the Discover Me website covers 11 heritage sites in East London and Essex run by the Thames Chase Trust. The homepage has high-quality photographs of each venue, with a snappy description available when you hover over.
From there, users can find out more about the museums, including access information, and browse through a selection of objects from the collections – but unfortunately, opening times aren’t available. A map on the website displays all the venues.
The website lists events taking place across the sites and suggests itineraries for people who want to visit more than one site in a day.
Discover Me is functional and well-designed; there are no fancy features on offer here, and the site is probably the better for it.
Website, Warsaw Rising 1944
Is the rich content of this website enhanced by its deliberately shaky text panels?
Warsaw Rising 1944, the winner in the cultural institution category of the 2015 Webby Awards – also referred to as the Oscars of the internet – is more of an experience than a museum website.
Produced by the Warsaw Rising Museum in Poland, the website was developed alongside an exhibition in the museum to mark the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Rising – 63 days of fighting by the Polish Resistance Army against the Nazi occupation in 1944.
Warsaw Rising 1944 presents a history of the city from 1918.
Film, historical maps and archive photography, as well as animated statistics, examine how the “Paris of the North” fared under both totalitarian rule and in a new era as part of the European Union.
The content is fascinating, but the journey it isn’t always easy. I struggled to move beyond chapter one pre-war Warsaw, until I tampered with the URL and discovered the rest of the site. The design could also be problematic for anyone with a sight impairment as the text panels deliberately shake, and elsewhere white captions laid over pale images cannot be read.
For anyone interested in learning about the history of Warsaw, this is a valuable resource. But they will need a great deal of patience to overcome its lack of usability.