MW2010 crit room comments

www.imj.org.il - susan hazan

Christina DePaolo:

• branding issues (low visibility of the logo)
• not obvious that the different components of the museum are part of the *same* museum
• visually, components of the brand, but not consistent branding and feel throughout the site
• brand appeared very text heavy
• the left to right nav switch caused conceptual mapping issues for non-native users
• "2000 year old scroll will take several minutes to dl" - great use of humor, use more
• text feels fairly marketing heavy and is something of a turn-off (sets the site back 10 yrs)
• sense of the museum itself and character doesn't readily come across
• locations needs to be represented under an umbrella of the brand
• problems with light grey areas intersecting and merging different content areas
• left side information was easy to ignore
• wanted to know more about the cohesive story of the israel museum and that wasn't obvious
• regular site search confused with imaginative access search, visually define and differentiate

Dana Mitroff-Silvers:

• site conveys the depth of the holdings, especially for a new(ish) museum
• imagery on the site are compelling and make me want to visit
• do more imagery, feature stunning locations and visuals
• phenomenal that much of the site is in 7 languages & all of it is bilingual
• biggest single problem was the navigation
• nav was overwhelming and confusing
• nav appears in too many locations (left, top, right, and bottom)
• multiple instances of exhibitions (is there a difference? why are they repeated?)
• difference between galleries and exhibitions also led to additional confusion
• also confusion between "visiting the museum", "visit"
• bits that appear in pop-windows lose the global navigation and are blocked by some browsers
• too many layers of nav (up to 5 levels in some instances)
• obvious that everyone wants their stuff on the homepage (problem everywhere, but needs to change)
• think about doing card sorting exercises for organizing the content on the homepage
• try user testing, if possible, with non-israeli tourists
• search was unusual with pop-up layer
• search results title not clear
• calendar hard to find

Nate Solas:

• far too many new windows pop open
• first impression of the homepage was that all of the focus in on the nav, hard to understand at a glance
• right side navigation nesting is way too dense with far too heavy text blocks
• work on refining the hierarchy
• suggestion: make logo bigger, bigger visual nav bar along the top
• suggestion: connect the past exhibit content with the collection and tie together; use those as features
• take advantage of deep links into the site and feature those at higher levels of the site
• really loved collection search, but wanted to love more
• make collection search *far* easier to find
• awesome imaginative access search, brilliant idea -- do *more* of this and led to exploration of new parts of the site
• as you click through to different places, you lose site identity. bad from a user perspective, even if they are different sites
• easy to lose sense of location in site hierarchy the more the site is explored
• really liked the idea of the scrolls but loading was *way* too long and didn't magnify enough
• byte loader feedback is a bit funky and end # of bytes kept changing

Audience Discussion:

• multiple windows a by-product of multiple domains and sites
• work on a better sense of the 'whole", photo-montage or similar
• use a 'share' button (which is actually there but at the bottom and hard to find)

play.powerhousemuseum.com - seb chan

Dana Mitroff-Silvers:

• the gives the impression of being for kids, but the content feels that it's for parents
• not clear that the site is actually geared for parents to sit with their kids
• tight, sweet site. good graphics and copy
• good tidbits and tips for parents - "sit next to the cafe..."
• learning goals and objectives weren't apparent for the site
• nice that the games tie nicely into the collection
• no real warning when links were going to download PDFs, especially because they were large
• intended age range (2-7) isn't apparent (and intent of the website not found)

Nate Solas:

• a lot of the information in the intro was useful and helpful
• great simple site that was easy to have in my head all at once
• felt like a perfect scale microsote
• favorite page is "visiting", great icons, I'm going to steal it
• cut out the beginning part of the flash animation, but leave the bee
• visual design is very, very clean and fun to use
• the connector between the top nav and content (you are here) felt redundant
• do more cross linking into the collection although what you have is fantastic
• needs a share link for this sort of stuff
• keep PDFs so I can make a library, but also make web pages of the stuff. both should exist
• export as images if need be if the workload is difficult
• no dates associated with anything
• be very careful in what gets added -- don't pollute the site with crazy amounts of new content

Christina DePaolo:

• immediately responded to the colors, visual palette is great
• did have a bit of an identity crisis, although my baggage may be related to be a museum person
• visited the site by creating a persona - single mom w/ two kids
• big go buttons were very helpful and made the actions clear
• while some links went off the site, that felt okay
• although the ticket buying process was surprising, especially with the pricing ($280 as a single mom), pricing appears late in the process and should be part of the initial information before heading down the buying path
• buying process seemed standard enough (when asked about the 3rd party ticket system)
• loved that the little cartoon girl had maroon hair
• felt like the animated characters helped with brand identity and a way to identify with the museum
• game was fun, simple, and easy to use (missed out on finding zoe's hat (seb says to check all of the drawers))
• sense of place in the site was very good
• all of the content feel very related to the museum and got a good sense of the museum
• add a description of the powerhouse museum as part of the visit section - icing on the cake

Audience:

• feels like the text could be reduced even more - text that was there, was informative and useful
• why no search for the site? (not done because there's not a crazy amount of content and forced us to make simple nav. possibly include search in the next iteration or make it faceted)

www.moma.org - allegra burnette

Nate Solas:

• when the site first launched last year, front page was originally 3mb, now down to 700k
• BUT, while the servers were overloaded, these large beautiful images are awesome
• site feels bloaty
• good job of organizing the site into some good buckets - 5 options in the nav
• "Explore" is a near perfect bucket, "Learn, Support, Shop" all feel like they could be collapsed better
• Surprising that with only 6 real options, the page feels busy. There needs to be some additional design aesthetic work to help refine, but the direction is generally good
• Nate asks if the social media stuff has been used - yes, but slow. Need to better expose this stuff better. Share and Schedule will be further enhanced
• Based on the actions I have once I sign in, I desperately want the site to evolve to reflect how I'm defining myself rather than staying the same (MoMA recommends in development which partially addresses)
• not easy to recover my password
• suspicious of nav on the bottom (took a leap of faith in trying it out)
• exhibition subsites are fantastic and incredible
• calendar page only has images from the subsite which seemed artificially limiting
• calendar page doesn't feel immediately grounding
• timeline wraps in a wonky way and colors felt confusing because of weird visual wrapping
• tiny subnav feels a little confusing
• overall, as good as possible and this is a great attempt

Christina DePaolo:

• the site is very emotional and speaks to the identity of MoMA, branding is very strong and positive
• doesn't feel like every other site that's just built into templates on top of a CMS, presence is much stronger
• logging out doesn't feel obvious (power button next to user name)
• I felt a bit like a stupid user in trying to remember basic things like password (openid and facebook auth in the works)
• never received a message back from the site when I registered and lost a little bit of love
• loved the bookmarking and notes stuff, but received some odd error messages which made the experience feel fragile
• great interface for the bookmarking
• search worked with misspellings which was awesome
• search was a mixed blessing, find a lot but also easy to move away from the search information and hard to get back
• search filter was a really great way to search through content
• expected a bit more of a tailored visitor experience
• wanted larger images in the collection images
• permalinks were a nice feature
• benefits of membership are well explained... clear and straightforward. process felt good and benefit was clear
• timeline was very overwhelming in the collection section
• error message was awesome (artistic and clever)

Dana Mitroff-Silvers:

• biggest impression are all the little details that are evident throughout the site
• like a finely crafted italian leather purse, so much is so good and non-obvious for the average person
• image captions are rollovers and avoid wasting screen space
• also evidence of flickr integration (image from flickr, share your own)
• tons and tons of ancillary information and the whole experience feels incredibly thoughtful and well organized.
• MoMA does all of the stuff that we never even thought about
• like the bottom nav and glad that MoMA tried it out
• 'Who Are You' didn't really work all that well for me, changes were too subtle

Audience:

• any usability studies with the bottom nav? (was an 11th hour decision but follow up testing has been pretty positive)
• coming from a print background, question about readability and contrast in color palettes
• from a usability perspective, the bottom nav is awful

www.getty.edu/museum/programs

Nate Solas:

• breadcrumbs don't actually feel that useful and visually fall away
• side nav feel like events rather than actual nav information
• like the broad images, but there's eventually going to be a cropping issue
• splitting some of the title across mutilple blocks of color makes it sometimes hard to read