Interaction Design - Good Museum site design

Week 12-13 Assignment: "You, your mother (75 years old; with bad knees; sweet old lady, with a great sense of humor and interest in anything that he grandson is interested in) and your 15 year old (energetic and mercurial) son, Josh, are planning to visit XXXX city and go to XXXX museum for a 4 hour visit. You need to make sure that the trip to the museum will go well, so try to plan for any and all disasters before hand."

I started with the links Serena provided us and found The Design Museum in London. I've never been to London... it's a design museum... sounds like a winner to me! From first glance this looked like it would be a successful museum website. I wasn't disappointed.

On the home page, I'm presented with great big colors, big words and big navigation tools. Navigation right off the top to current exhibits, things to do with kids, getting here, about the museum, the museum shop (always a great place for cool gifts and things to remember the trip by), education, and of course, a link to design at the museum. Let's start with Mom, she's always a tough customer (and usually quick to complain). I'll start with General Information.


Great stuff here, pretty much everything I'll need to see what this place looks like, how accessible it is. Phone numbers; hours of operation for the museum, the cafe and the shop; photography, admission prices, discounts, buy your tickets online, accessibility for wheelchairs and the visually impaired and a contact email and phone number in case we need to ask more questions. Wonderful! In the top of the page above the navigation bar, a "drop-up" menu appears with links to more details, faqs, contact information and the all important Getting Here section.


Getting Here opens with a map of the area that's pretty simple and easy to read on the screen. There are also links to the pdf version of this map and also a link to the Street Map website which gives a busier look at where this museum is. Which buses, which boats, which subways and how long of a walk we'll have from each of those drop off places. This is great, now I can plan which method of transportation we'll need to use to get here. Also on this line drawn map, I can see that City Hall is pretty close by, and there are also directional arrows to other museums in the area. There aren't links to these other museums here, so a few points taken away. But, I did see links to some of them under the Links navigation button. Underground and bus stops are also clearly marked on this map.

I think we've got Mom and her aging knees covered. Now, about the teenager. I've already found out that there's a cafe, so food shouldn't be a problem for the hungry kid, but I haven't been able to figure out just what kind of food they serve. He'll have to make do. Cool factor? Time to check out the Exhibitions. From here, I'm not sure how we'll do. The first page doesn't look like there are that many exhibitions here. I click on the Current Exhibitions from the pop-up bar and another set of links pops up. I'll try the Translating Nature exhibit - can't go wrong with the idea of the outdoors, I hope.

Now this looks cool. This is a collection of designer Luigi Colani's "extraordinary large scale prototype designs including trucks aircraft and cars. A great maverick of 20th Century design, with a career spanning almost six decades, Colani has applied his organic design style to produce biodynamic cars, boats, planes, ceramics and consumer goods."

I think I've hit the jackpot, especially since one of the images in the slideshow is one killer looking Ferrari. The kid better thank me well for this one. Bonus points: there's links to critics reviews of the show, Colani's website and tickets. Super useful.

I'm sold - I click on buy tickets. Now, I just have to get myself to London. :-)