PORTFOLIO : Natural History Museum LA

Challenge

NHM's website had not changed significantly in ten years. It had over 6,000 pages of content, with no content management system. All content entry went through a one man interactive department, and the backlog was months long. NHM needed a new site that could engage everyone from school children to research scientists while being affordable and easy to maintain.

Process

• Conducted in-museum intercept interviews and an online site survey to understand user needs;
• Developed user personas and multi-channel scenarios;
• Reorganized site structure completely;
• Developed editorial voice for site content;
• Tested site prototypes repeatedly with user segments;
• Trained museum staff in writing for the Web and CMS use;
• Developed an SEO-friendly site using Drupal CMS, including custom email alerts of workflow changes, multimedia player integration, and custom content entry widgets that allow the author to change their content's structure.

Result

A fresh, compelling site that compares favorably to the world's top natural history and science museum sites. The new NHM.org highlights the museum's collection and its wide-ranging activities while providing NHM staff with the tools to keep the site current and engaging for years to come.

Tags

Information Architecture, Content Strategy, Technical Strategy, Contextual Inquiry, Copywriting, Drupal, Usability, Qualitative Research, Surveys, Heuristics, Ethnography, Best Practices Research, Personas, Look & Feel Design, Brainstorming & Workshops, UI Prototyping, Requirements Gathering, Technical Design, Software Development, Flash, Nonprofit, Consumer, CMS, Search, Competitive Analysis

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NHM: Making natural science fun

Homepage with exploratory interactive navigation

Powerful CMS allows easy updates from researchers in the field

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