www.figarodigital.co.uk
Immediate Response
Damian Proctor, Creative Director at Redweb, explains how the agency created a new, responsive homepage for the Science Museum and outlines some of the key developments currently impacting on design and build projects
T
he prospect of launching a responsive, future-proof website that’ll work across all devices – including those that haven’t been invented yet - can be daunting for
Damian Proctor, Creative Director at Redweb
organisations with an existing, non-responsive web presence. The expense and upheaval of starting from scratch combined with the sheer pace of change within digital design can But, says Damian Proctor, Creative Director at Redweb, moving your website into the future is something that can be done one step at a time, and the agency’s work with the Science Museum sheds light on key issues within design and build, as well as illuminating some of the broader challenges facing anyone running a complex,
content-rich site which needs to work across multiple devices. Race to launch
Every year almost three million people pass through the Science Museum’s doors in South Kensington and its website attracts more than 12 million visits annually. But, says Proctor, when Redweb were brought on board in 2012 the site hadn’t changed dramatically since 2006, at which point Facebook barely existed and the iPhone was yet to launch. “The Science Museum was very keen to make a change to their digital presence before the Olympics began earlier this year,” he explains. A full relaunch wasn’t on the cards, so instead Redweb created a new homepage. Using responsive design techniques,
sciencemuseum.org.uk automatically adjusts its display according to different screen dimensions. “The Science Museum knew that people accessing the site during the Olympics were likely to be doing so on a small or medium-sized screen rather than on a desktop,” says Proctor. “And they realised they didn’t have much of a handle on that.
The new page is just one element within a much larger site, but it’s pulling in content from across that site and surfacing it on the homepage, allowing people to get information about visiting, events and exhibitions or just to explore the Science Museum’s offering through social media. As well as the site being fully optimised for mobiles and tablets, we wanted to rejuvenate the brand online. The museum has done a lot of work to promote their brand for people who actually visit, but the forward technically and offer something more sophisticated, but they were conscious of the challenge of doing that across the entire site upfront. What we’ve done is launch the responsive homepage with a view to setting the tone for the whole site.”
Making content count
With the Olympics looming, speed was of the essence and a number of objectives had to be met.
to become smaller on narrower screens or be replaced by text- led graphical features to facilitate fast loading and deliver the aesthetic experience the museum wanted. Next, the page had to pull in feeds from Facebook and Twitter and include travel information so that it became a single port-of-call for visitors. “The other challenge,” says Proctor, “is that the site is a mix of things. There’s the museum, which you want people to visit. It’s a shop. It’s a charity looking for donations. Users are looking for events. There might be particular topics people are looking to research. There are multiple journeys people might be looking to make, so the challenge was to capture as many of those journeys on the homepage as possible and support them. The homepage has to handle all these different audience-types while remaining an absolute voice of authourity.” Additionally, Proctor explains, there was the sheer wealth and volume of content on the site to take account of. That content involves everything from editorial articles and video to event calendars, all of which had to be presented in a clear and intuitive style. “There was a question here of pulling in things which users might have missed,” says Proctor. Part of the solution here was
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