Your brief is, New York City — go!
Redesigning the Museum of the City of New York’s website
In late 2015 I was given the green light to start working on the redesign of mcny.org. This came at a time when the institution was undergoing a lot of dramatic change. Firstly, an 8-year long capital construction project was coming to an end, with newly opened spaces such as an auditorium and theater, and the museum was looking beautiful and elegant, a little more so with every improvement. Secondly, we were working solidly on the Museum’s first ever permanent galleries, with an exhibition called New York at its Core. This was to be the final touch on the building renovations, and the team was looking forward to the opening, as a moment to relaunch or introduce the museum to visitors.
I might have been a little crazy, given the already full workload, but it seemed critical to address the website. With all of the marketing, advertising and general activity going into the new exhibition launch, I wanted to get our online house in order. It needed an overhaul to bring the experience on par with that of walking into the museum itself.
The old website had some great content, but it didn’t particularly shine. It lacked hierarchy, color, personality, and it didn’t have a point of view, which is a terrible crime, given that our playground here is the one and only New York City, known for its firm opinions and expressive qualities.
Before the website project kicked off, I had some work to do to justify a redesign. “What’s wrong with the website?” stakeholders would ask when I suggested that it could do with some work. And, “we just re-launched it under 2 years ago”, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” said others.
Inspire with an old-fashioned show ‘n’ tell
I also quickly realized that my colleagues just weren’t that into online projects, and I felt this was partly due to a lack of inspiration. They visited websites for their utility, or to occasionally see what other museums were doing, and this was only showcasing a small corner of the internet that isn’t always known for good design. So I pulled together a presentation that I hoped would show just how wonderful a website can be. I decided to tailor the message to my audience by focusing on content strategy primarily. The presentation was for a room of executive, curatorial, education, development and marketing representatives.
I parlayed some basic goals for the museum’s online presence, around being relevant, understood, accessible, a trusted source for information about the city’s past, present and future. Then, I ran through different kinds of storytelling online, such as micro-stories, location based stories, longform, data-driven, live and visitor centered co-curated stories, thinking this could spark some ideas and connections.
Finally, I ended on a light note with the age old internet question, do we go for #lolcats or #loldogs? What do we have more of in our collection? People left with a smile on their faces, and I was relieved that it seemed to go well. A few weeks later I was still getting emails about new ideas people had for their areas online, and the Director was mentioning the possibility of a new website more often. I wonder if it’s the cute baby animals that sealed the deal? Either way, if you ever find yourself wanting to tackle a new project but are not sure how to bring colleagues with you, consider taking a weekend and pulling together a presentation — make it as fun and lively and inspirational as you can. I really think it works. Show, don’t tell, after all.
A fresh start
The moment of project kickoff felt like a fresh horizon, and the first thing I wanted to tackle was our personality, how is the museum’s mission and purpose represented online?
A content audit of the old site clearly showed an inconsistency in tone of voice, but a fallback into a safe, more formal, rigid voice of the institution. It didn’t feel welcoming. A heuristic review of the site design and architecture revealed confusing navigation options, a lack of curatorial tools to highlight and promote our best programming at any given time, and a lack of distinction between content types. The site was also lacking a richness — the exhibition pages weren’t very immersive, and there was no space for storytelling. If our mission, as a museum is as follows:
The Museum of the City of New York celebrates and interprets the city, educating the public about its distinctive character, especially its heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation. Founded in 1923 as a private, nonprofit corporation, the Museum connects the past, present, and future of New York City. It serves the people of New York and visitors from around the world through exhibitions, school and public programs, publications, and collections.
How do we act on our mission of connecting our visitors with the past, present and future concerns of the city online without a space for image essays, video and feature articles to share with our visitors? How to begin to trace that distinctive character and diversity?
I decided to run a brand mapping exercise with key stakeholders to determine where the new website should be situated in terms of look and feel, and tone of voice. Comparable websites from other museum, gallery and cultural institutions were presented to the group, along with a spectrum for plotting these sites along the lines of:
- Informative/Authoritative → Entertaining
- Formal → Friendly/Conversational
The group consensus was that the new site should be friendlier/more approachable and conversational in tone. In addition to the visual mapping exercise, stakeholders were asked to nominate keywords to describe the character of the Museum. The top keywords that emerged were:
- Modern (contemporary, not stuffy)
- Local (of the neighborhood, of the City)
- Gritty (having an edge, not sophisticated)
- Energetic (vibrant)
- Smart (see also, opinionated)
- Contrasting (the old with the new and reflecting a city of contradictions)
This exercise formed the basis for a brief that I could feel confident in, knowing that it had helped to visualize the direction stakeholders were comfortable to go in, before we hit the concept design phase.
Dreams and desires
High on the wish-list for the new dream website were a few simple things:
Showcase images in a more immersive way — we always had great images for exhibitions and from our collection, it was just harder to see them in the old site.
Introduce video throughout the site and give it presence — I’d just hired a filmmaker onto the team as part of a strategy to capture more behind the scenes moments and share museum stories with a broader audience. I wanted this work to shine.
Add color and personality — the new site introduces an expanded color palette with pops of color used sparingly for calls to action, and interchanges background colors through different sections of the site, alternating between light grey and what we like to call ‘NYC slate grey’, the color of the pavements we pound to get to the subway everyday.
Flexible content layout and curation of key pages — we simply needed more ways to easily showcase the best content at any given time on the homepage and other key sections. The old site was very automated, but also very rigid. The new site requires more care, but places a lot of control and flexibility into an editor’s hand to create new pages and sections of the site within the established design framework.
Introduce new content types — the new site incorporates a ‘Stories’ section that provides a view on the work that happens around the museum and a publishing platform for telling more in-depth stories around collections, exhibitions and events. The education section is richer in content too, with a new promo video, new lesson plan templates and an object essay series as well as content curated by audience type and exhibitions.
Improved navigation and ease of use — the information architecture has been simplified, and flattened, to fit within a responsive mobile framework, taking mobile as the starting point and scaling up for desktop. Within that structure, there are now more ways to cross-link content between sections for horizontal browsing and discovery of related content.
Encourage a visit to the museum by showcasing the neighborhood — one of the key challenges that the museum faces, in comparison to other museums in Manhattan, is its location. Based high up on Museum Mile in the East Harlem neighborhood, it’s simply too far for many visitors who rarely go past The Met or tourists who only have a short amount of time and are more likely to go to Museums clustered in mid- to downtown. The new site works to address that issue by showing that the museum is indeed in a lovely part of the city, enjoying a position right across the road from Central Park, The Conservatory Garden, and in a neighborhood rich with street art, food, and other cultural delights.
How did we do?
Post-launch
I’m continuing to refine the site on a daily basis with incremental improvements, and planning the roadmap for new features in 2017, so watch this space. I’d love for you to visit the site at mcny.org, and if you’re in New York City, drop by and say hello!
Credits: Much respect and appreciation goes to my wonderful creative partners on this project, Athletics. Given that there isn’t an in-house team at the museum to work on these kinds of projects, it was important to me to find an external team that could really join me on this journey as creative leaders, collaborative workers, and completely committed to the cause. Hat, tip.
