The nature of the Open Plaques project to date has seen the content and functionality grow through incremental updates and improvements. While these changes have really enriched the project, what our group wanted to do is step back and re-ask the questions that define the user experience of Openplaques.org and to see if we can make any improvements. The discussions within the group threw up as many questions as answers as we tried to understand our target audience, plotting the kind of journeys users might adopt and how we can use design to facilitate these paths. One topic that came up was our usage of maps and how we can make it more relevant to the data displayed, (or, indeed, if on occasions maps were necessary at all). It was really useful to have such an enthusiastic team coming up with ideas to intrigue and excite users, offering an incentive to click through and hop around the data. (perhaps in a similar way to how one can in Wikipedia). This has resulted in the addition of featured or related plaques on many of the page views with the goal to try and create some form of narrative that can be unique to each visitor’s interests. Plaque level detail Consensus reached on these issues resulted in a series of wireframes re-defining the information existing already in a way that is hopefully more relevant and useful to the people who are going to use it. Today, designs are being drawn up based upon this work and will be rolled out in the near future!
-
I posted to wordr.org
Open Plaques Open Day: UX and Design group
December 1 2010, 8:55am | Comments »
1
