Living Museum of the West
2021
Founded in 1984, Melbourne Living Museum of the West is an ecomuseum located at Pipemakers Park, Maribyrnong. It acts as an archive hub for researchers looking to learn more about West Melbourne past through recorded storytelling.
The Brief
Recently, the Living Museum had been hoping to reinvigorate and expand its subjective story collection in contemporary ways. Part of this goal is achieved through increasing their website accessibility. It is important the museum expresses its non-compartmentalised nature through a modern website framework as a contemporary reinvention. We were hence, tasked to produce a branding and UX refresh of the museum's website in both desktop and mobile iterations.
Our Concept
During the research phase, we determined there were two main user categories:
Purposeful Users
People who come to the website with a goal they are trying to achieve in mind. Whether they are researchers, regular visitors or those wishing to lodge complaints, they all wish to access specific parts of the website quickly and purposefully.
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Wanderers
People to enter the website by chance or for the first time. They wish to browse and explore what the museum is all about while picking up little bits of inspiration on the way. Perhaps they are looking for a fun weekend activity or wishing to procrastinate while learning something new.
Our Goals
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Looking at heritage through a critical lens.
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Early celebratory tone with industrial and agricultural histories was actually quite destructive in retrospect to indigenous environments.
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Must bring in new perspectives.
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Increase accessibility.
My Role
I worked in a team of 5 to curate and give the museum's website a refresh. Overall, I worked to create reusable components and prototyped important interactivity functions such as the menu, navigation bar and footers.
Style Guide
Colour Scheme
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Swatched from Entrance Map
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Headings: Futura PT Demi
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Used for consistency with the logo. Matches contemporary reinvention style as with Bauhaus Aesthetics.
Body Paragraph: Open Sans
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A humanist sans serif typeface that is highly optimized and used for web and mobile interfaces. The presence of the handwritten form, its neutral and friendly appearance, and its high legibility fits the contemporary reinvention scheme.
Open Sans also has relations to open-source data and wikis. This matches the values of the Living Museum as a place to gain knowledge without borders.
Futura
Open Sans
pt 60 Heading 1
pt 36 Heading 2
pt 20 Heading 3
pt 20 Body Paragraphs
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Card Sorting
By employing this user-centered design technique, I gathered valuable insights into how users naturally categorize and prioritize information.
Our group were presented with various content elements in the form of digital 'cards' and were asked to categorize them based on their perceived relationships and importance.
The results provided a clear understanding of users' mental models and preferences, enabling a well-structured and intuitive navigation system.​
Creating an initial system
Part of the challenge of reorganising such a large archive of information and pages is managing the information architecture works and how they flow. These are some initial wireframing we had to understand the order of the user experience and flow of the customer journey.
Implenting a Grid System
Revisited the drawing board to find more efficient ways to display the information/content. Due to the astronomical amount of text within the museum website, it was imperative to break the verticality of the site. This will help reduce user frustration and increase the user experience as they will not have to scroll so far down to find their respective information.
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Using a grid system helps improve space efficiency and allow for less verticality.
Having everything properly aligned increases user experience as elements are easy to track and find.
Within each project, breaking up the page into blocks help to reduce having huge chunks of text and allocate a visual to each text.
