You can view the web site at www.historicnewengland.org or dive right into searching and browsing the online collections — full of photos, artifacts, and reference materials having to do with 400 years of New England History.

We’re currently in the final stage of the project, conducting usability tests on the new site.

Some highlights of the new site:

• Improved navigation and fresh visual design replaced a site that had grown organically over ten years.
• Greatly expanded content on historic properties, preservation, and more: site updates are completely under the control of Historic New England staff for the first time, through an easy-to-use content management system (CMS) called Plone.
• Online collections access: users can now browse and search Historic New England’s extensive collections of museum objects, archival materials, and books. Online exhibitions are also easier to create.

Users can search and browse the collections and archives

• Interactive events calendar allows users to browse events by date and location and then click through to the online shop for registration.
• Search engine provides quick access to site content and collection highlights from any page, and there are also specialized searches for collections and events.
• Galleries and slide shows are available throughout the site to better present Historic New England’s great photography. Here’s one about the animals at Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm.
• Multimedia is also supported, as seen in the Berlin & Coos County oral history project.
• Interactive map provides a visual overview of Historic New England’s 36 property locations.

Interactive map to Historic New England's 36 properties

• Integration with Historic New England’s online shop (developed by a third party) enables them to sell memberships, donations, event registrations, and merchandise. The shop integration will also enable single sign on between the site and the shop, allowing access to restricted content as well as member discounts on purchases.
• News has categories and feeds to position news appropriately throughout the site, and allows user commenting.
• Microsites enable visitors to rent properties for weddings and functions and to celebrate Historic New England’s centennial.

Home page for the Function Rentals microsite

Dynamic Diagrams has been working with Historic New England since January 2009 to define web strategy, information architecture, user experience, and visual design for the site. We worked with our development partners to implement the site using the Plone CMS, to convert legacy content, and to integrate the site visually and functionally with Historic New England’s online shop. We collaborated with our partners and Historic New England’s collections team to define and develop the Collections Access portal. Finally, we and our partners trained Historic New England staff authors on Plone and writing for the web, so that they could develop new content for the site and maintain it going forward.

We are thrilled to see the site go live and congratulate Historic New England on a successful launch.

Rattle offers its first blog post on developing the user experience strategy for “A History of the World,” the companion web site for the BBC Radio 4 series of the same name.  Written and narrated by Neil MacGregor, Director of the British Museum, the radio program travels through two million years to tell the history of humanity through 100 handmade objects from the Museum, ranging from a stone chopping tool to the cell phone.  The web site enables exploration of these objects in detail, but also gives users the opportunity to participate by commenting on the collection or uploading images from their own personal collections.  Rattle’s initial post walks us through general principles from their brief (e.g., “some use of participatory media”), the resulting strategic goals (e.g., “focus on attracting, rewarding, and promoting a small minority of contributors”), and its initial brainstorm of features (e.g., “select 10 objects to represent the History of Me”).  Now that the site is live, it will be interesting to read future installments to see how these initial high-level goals and blue-sky thinking compare to what was actually developed.

Historic New England selected Dynamic Diagrams to create the user experience for the site (research, information architecture, visual design, and XHTML and CSS coding). We worked with our development partners to implement a Plone content management system (CMS) that provides Historic New England — for the first time — with complete control to create their own pages.

The Centennial site is also a preview of things to come. Watch this space for a future announcement of Historic New England’s redesigned and enhanced main web site.

The World Health Organization’s Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR) unveiled its new corporate web site this week.

Although the existing site had much to offer, users had difficulty finding the information they needed (namely grant opportunties and TDR research publications), and the client felt that TDR’s contributions were buried.  The redesigned site features a new information architecture that makes key content easier to find, while highlighting TDR’s accomplishments and new business strategy.

“It’s only in the absence of anything else that gives off scent that users start to think it’s a likely help. Therefore, the real problem is the pages that lead to the site map are missing important scent. Fixing the scent issues on those pages will eliminate the need for the site map. However, deciding to improve the site map doesn’t fix the scent problem — it’s only a cop-out.”

I do agree that redesigning a site map is not the way to address findability issues, but it’s a drastic move to get rid of the site map altogether, even if there are only a few people that use them. We look at the site map not as a back-up option for locating content, but rather as the single-page view of what the whole web site offers. When done well (ideally as a single static page of links that doesn’t go deeper than 2-3 levels in the hierarchy), the site map is not a crutch, but a complementary navigation tool.

Back in 2002, we designed a Modeling Access Control Poster for that year’s ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit. We intentionally challenged ourselves to explain web-based access control systems on a conceptual level, rather than show a particular case.

This approach now helps us, internally, to define the appropriate requirements-gathering baseline for a newly conceived system.

The printable poster is here: Modeling Access Control Poster (PDF, 287K).

Before moving forward, Polansky took a few steps back by employing traditional IA exercises such as wireframing (adapted to a more interactive experience) and usability testing to validate the direction and identify the holes. Besides pointing out the similarities and differences between building web sites and RIAs, he offers a good shortlist of pitfalls to avoid, including the potential for increased revision cycles and building interaction at the expense of content. I would tend to agree with him on both fronts. In our practice, we’ve found that constructing process flows and annotated wireframes are key to keeping everyone on the same page about the intended user experience and the possible trade-offs between vision and feasibility. These activities ease (if not eliminate) any worry of creating interaction for its own sake.

What if we had waited to get it all just right before we released FC Expert Bloggers? We’d still be in the dugout. We’d have been guessing instead of seeing what the market actually thinks. In an effort to make our product perfect, we probably would have been forced to spend loads of money fixing problems that might not have mattered to our readers.

The agile approach is one that certainly has its benefits — it’s flexible and means users get to see the latest features sooner, without waiting for an annual update. But in order to be successful, an agile approach still has to start with stakeholder and user requirements that are validated through an information architecture, design, and development process. Only then can an organization be sure its site’s “killer widgets” are truly meeting the needs of its audience.

Luckily, our colleagues at St Andrews understood their new information architecture as a process, not an event. They involved people from across the university, took the time to understand the reasons behind our recommendations, and called on us to help educate stakeholders about our plans. The project was part town meeting, part information architecture crash course, not to mention figuring out where to put all those web pages.

Structurally, the relaunched web site is a radical departure from the old. (The 404 error page gives a hint.) Previously, the university’s many administrative offices had each looked after their own presence on the web, and the site became–for good and understandable reasons–a daunting, overgrown web-site-as-org-chart. The new information architecture makes two important changes. First, the site represents the character and vitality of the institution as a whole, not just the individual parts. Second, no prior knowledge of the university’s bureaucracy is required. Content is organized according to its audience, not its author. The home page and its subsidiaries are tailored for outside audiences and infrequent visitors. Alternate home pages, a completely separate system of categories, and different navigation and interface designs are provided for current students and staff.

To see photos of a sunny day in Scotland and read about our presentation last June (and other tales) from someone on the client’s side, check out Gareth Saunders’ personal blog, View from the Potting Shed.