MoMA Redesign in Action

So after my research and competitive analysis for MoMA, I’m ready to actually attempt a redesign. Here goes…

I’m sure you can figure out which one I decided to flesh out when you get further along. Honestly, I think I was having a poor foresight moment when I decided to design a page that is constructed with the navigation as the main focus. Duh…

navigation?

This is a great example of “…but it looks cool” design. I chose the layout that looked the most interesting to me without considering how it would really function and the user experience.  Before I get off on how wrong this design is, let me explain what I did.

I had this idea that I wanted the individual, blue panels to move up and down to reveal their content–which since I don’t at this stage have to make this page function I can dream up any kinda craziness that I want, right? I wanted the logo to stay stationary in the same location on every page for consistency and perhaps the background image to change behind the logo. I also need to mention that we were supposed to take into consideration 3 personas while designing this page.

The 3 personas, are three different people that represent people in the museums theoretical target audience. Take a look at their details and recommendations for the redesign: george_vance, theresa_lowell, & heather_adams. The long and short of it is that george likes to read and wants access to articles/printable materials, theresa is a mom that wants to organize things for her kiddos in a snap, and heather is one of us and wants it to be all shiny & designy.  In addition to there specific preferences we also have to consider the client, MoMA and their need/desire to push memberships and support/donations for the museum.  Oh and the rest of the world that might come to this site. Ready go!

So, referring to my first crack at this, I will point out a few things that I just totally did not focus on that I should have besides more intuitive navigation. The membership piece is big and I totally forgot to emphasize it. George got some of his readable content, but not necessarily printable and not in large quantities and Theresa is not really going to find her kiddy activities w/ ease.  Nobody’s happy, but it looks cool and that’s all that counts, right… just kidding!

Round 2

So after our class critique and further re-examination of the personas, I have made several important changes.

better?

First things first, emphasize that membership, JOIN! I made it a pointto encourage the viewer not one, not two, but three different points of interest for the memberships. There’s a box in the middle of the page and two red  links in the navigation and sub navigation.  Next, our buddy George can to to the “news” section and before he goes he can get a preview of what he might find there on the first page. Then there’s the kiddos… now I don’t necessarily associate museums with children so I thought would kill two birds with one stone. In my competitive analysis I continuously referred to the access to a calendar showcasing the museums upcoming events and I access to the calendar from the first page would satisfy that need and could also include children’s events without being specifically for children. Which brings me to the “today” section. During our class critique there was some discussion for individuals to be able to login and plan their trip to the museum and though my “today” section is not that it inspired putting a panel specifically for the days events on the front page. This allows for patrons to see what’s going on today or to see what’s going on another day both from the first page. I kept the MoMA logo with the image in the background, but moved it to a more accommodating space for the rest of the layout. The navigation is more functional and could be used consistently deeper in the site which is always less confusing for the user.

Overall, I feel the second layout is a dramatic improvement over the first. And it emphasized and ever present problem with web design, just because it looks good doesn’t mean it’s easy to use or functional= possibly not worth the “coolness” factor. For next few weeks we will be further focusing on navigation, and more specifically navigation as it related to sub pages and sub-sub pages. Stay tuned…