On the BBC/BM 'A History of the World': "Since this is radio, we are not allowed to see the objects, thus enhancing the status of their custodian as interceding priest. … Authenticity is essential and there must be no copies or representations – in MacGregor's case not so much as a picture." Well, you could look online.
And if is to be true "[i]t does not matter if no one ever sees the shard. Most museum objects are seen only by their guardians, albeit financed by tithes from taxpayers", we'd probably better hide the 230,000 Science Museum, National Railway Museum and National Media Museum objects online. On the other hand, I do like a good 'museum as church' argument, cos if it was true the office wouldn't have bundles of excited kids on the other side of the door and it might be be quieter.
On a more serious note, whenever I come across articles like this it reminds me how far we have to go in helping people realise exactly how accessible, enjoyable, potentially challenging and just plain interesting our (your, their) museums are.
This post on 'The future of wireframes?' chimed a few bells, not only because I'm revising for a Requirements Engineering exam but because I've been in the start-up phase for projects of all sizes lately and have been thinking hard about the best way to understand and communicate requirements. In doing so, I've realised that 'wireframes' has become one of those terms that mean different things to different people – and that of course, it's an entirely new term to people who haven't worked on a design phase of a digital project before. This summed up past and current definitions neatly:
For many years the primary role of wireframes was to specify software. We now use wireframes to investigate and explore how people will interact with a site. Using a ‘just enough’ approach, we often create a series of simple interactive prototypes to try out a variety of approaches to solving a problem. These prototypes can be made in HTML or they can be as simple as a series of Keynote slide for someone to click through.
This is a very different approach to wireframing. Rather than simply documenting where a link goes, the goal is to model and start experiencing what moving around a site feels like as quickly as possible. The prototype can then be tested and the results used to iteratively improve the end solution.
Of course, sites still need to be specified, but wireframes aren’t always the right tool for doing this.
A rare post from me – I've been completely caught up in work and my MSc for the past few months. Normal service will be resumed soon – I've still got to report on UKMW09 and a trip to Oslo to give a lecture on social media and museums, libraries and archives.
Inspired by the Yahoo! Design Pattern Library and expanding on situations particular to museum content (particularly exhibitions and catalogues), audiences and context (from stereotypes of museums as boring and dry to issues around authority and trust in cultural heritage)…
These design patterns might be useful for coming up with common data structures that could inform a shared schema for linking across collections, help provide a framework for sharing audience evaluation and comparing visitation figures, etc.
A bit of an experiment – let's see if it sticks.
If you're using design patterns already, do any that particularly need adapting come to mind? Or can you share some behaviours you've noticed that are typical of museum audiences?
Suggestions for simple starting points also welcome! I've put some very initial rough thoughts below – with any luck there are existing current typologies out there that could replace this.
Design patterns
Encouraging debate, comments
Participation rates on museum blogs and other commenting sites are often low, perhaps lower than the equivalent content might attract on a non-museum site. How have the most successful sites encouraged participation and comment?
Typology of museum sites (as a context for more specific design patterns)
NB: many sites will contain a mixture of types, though often collections or exhibition sites are presented as 'microsites'.
Brochure-ware
Do these still exist?
Experiential exhibitions sites
From shiny interactive/multimedia brochureware to games tied to the gallery experience/content.
Exhibition catalogue sites
Presentations of exhibition content, usually replicating curatorial or physical organisation methods used in the physical gallery or a translation of the print catalogue into a website.
Online-only exhibition site
Is this just about the level of interpretation – narratives, thematic contexts etc wrapped around object records?
Collections catalogue sites
Online catalogue, generally with organisation structures that replicate the management structures or subjects of the museum.
I've been doing an informal survey of how institutions present their online collection, and how they handle decisions like "advanced search", stemming of keywords, and whether they use an implicit AND or OR between multiple keywords. Hopefully I can summarize some of that into a few design patterns? If nothing else maybe I'll post the table here and let others go at it!
Just today. A day late to help my paper, alas! I've read a bunch of Morville's blog – he's pretty good at presenting the big ideas in an understandable way and that new book and site seem awesome. I'll have to see if I can get the Walker to pay for a copy for me… :)
Mia, Do you have a sense of the granularity you are looking for? The pattern libraries I've been using seem to focus on smaller snippets of interface (e.g. how to do a button, or an ordered list, etc. or Morville's search patterns). Would it be useful to re-frame the question of cultural heritage patterns at the same level? e.g. the Image/Tombstone pattern, which maybe used across different types of sites (or site functions). The point of this is to provide other developers re-usable/re-mixable code/style patterns, no?
I have some thoughts on this from a more research/analysis focus, but I don't think that's what you're getting at here. I can post more if that's of interest.
That's a good question – I don't actually mean the patterns are that broad, just that the application and desirability of a pattern will depend on the type of site, or the section of the site. For example, you could possibly build a pattern around providing the basic when/where/how much information – if successful, the visitor would be able to find that and be on their way to the actual museum within a few seconds. But if you'd spent a lot of time creating video content about an exhibition, you'd hope the visitor would stick around long enough and see enough to be convinced to take the next step, whether that's booking tickets or whatever.
And yes, please do post more! I think, to my mind, even image/tombstone depends on context – how big should the image be, how many images, interpretative or qualified dates in the tombstone data, etc.
