IN SEARCH OF NOVEL WAYS TO DESIGN LARGE CULTURAL WEB SITES Museums and the Web, 2010 S. De Caro – General Director for Antiquities (Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage) N. Di Blas, L. Spagnolo – HOC-LAB, Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
May 10, 2015
IN SEARCH OF NOVEL WAYS TO DESIGN LARGE CULTURAL WEB SITES
Museums and the Web, 2010
S. De Caro – General Director for Antiquities (Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage)
N. Di Blas, L. Spagnolo – HOC-LAB, Politecnico di Milano (Italy)
The problemInformation intensive website are "rooms of treasures" where invaluable items are stored. But risks are there. Users may:- get lost- get overloaded by information- never bumpo into intersting stuff (which is
buried under strata of navigation – will it ever be seen by anyone?)
- be unsatisfied by the "paths" offered tothem
- never find what they are looking for (and SEARCH is a power life-vest)
- … "Mona Lisa" – you find it (among other 22 works)"Woman portrait" - no
The wishWhat are our communication goals?- Findability
- Users can easily locate what they are looking for (provided they do know what they are looking for!)
- Serendipity- Users “stumble” into interesting pieces of information
- At a glance understanding- Users can easily make sense of the content
- Playful exploration- Users enjoy browsing the site’s content
- Playful learning- Users learn things as they browse
- Branding- The site conveys the institution’s value (e.g. we are authoritative…)
- …
One “try”
Web site for the Directorate-general of Antiquities in ItalyHuge amount of content forseenMany intended users' profilesPrototype version
A smart combination of:
RIAs (Rich Internet Applications)
Lihgtweight information-architecture
Advanced search paradigms (like faceted search)
More is envisioned
"Fuzzy" facets: Beyond the two-values (yes/no) facets, introducing the concept of relevance
Fish-eye approach: Outputs change according to the "zooming"
ITALY LOMBARDY MILAN
The archeological Museum of
Milan becomes
RELEVANT!
E.g.: looking for relevant museums for "Romans"…
Conclusions- A new generation of (very) large content-intensive
websites, coupling “traditional” engineered Information Architectures (offering strong organization, powerful navigation, context orientation, etc.) with features provided by search patterns and advanced interfaces
- A rich and rewarding experience for the users- For designers, the problem of designing complex
information architectures is SIMPLIFIED and they can CONCENTRATE on communication/cultural issues directly
Why don’t we cooperate?