Lucy Moore. Creating an online interactive using a ‘difficult’ collection
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MCG’s Museums+Tech 2016 presentation Parallel sessions B #2 Lucy Moore, Leeds Museums and Galleries, Creating an online interactive using a ‘difficult’ collection
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Lucy Moore. Creating an online interactive using a ‘difficult’ collection
- 1. Lucy Moore Projects Curator: First World War @CuratorLucy lucy.moore@leeds.gov.uk Creating an online Interactive using a ‘difficult’ collection
- 9. Link to live version
- 11. How can our other collections enrich the interactive?
- 22. Live Testing … in a field!
- 27. Top user cities • Leeds • London • (not set) • Brisbane • Melbourne • Auckland • Sydney • Perth • Wellington • Christchurch 10,491 sessions (complete user journeys) 8,489 users
- 31. Copyright … Don’t mess with the Queen!
- 32. Don’t mess with the RAF! And even if designer says it’s OK – ask to see proof
- 33. Commissioning and Planning Tenders invited / Shortlisting / Interviews Medals interactive – original timescales: • Short listing by 24 January 2014 • Interviews in the week of 27 January 2014 • Selections by 31 January 2014 • First designs submitted for comment/approval by 28 February • Final designs submitted for testing/tweaking by 31 March • Interactive delivered by 30April 2014 Actual launch date: 9 July
- 34. Thank you! Lucy Moore Project Curator: First World War Leeds Museums & Galleries Lucy.moore@leeds.gov.uk @CuratorLucy #WW1Leeds
Editor's Notes
- Ali: Our First World War Guardians hosted on the My Learning Website (background to MyL) educational activities inspired by WW1 medals stories of six individuals who received them users can create their own medal online and view it in 3D Lucy: New audience for what is often seen as very ‘male oriented’ subject matter; Translated a ‘real life’ workshop to the digital domain
- Collectable, valuable, often the only object people have from their war service, national – comonality,
- They all look similar! There were standard issues – issued across - what is striking – metal! Shiny! Colourful! Started thinking about medals in a BLING workshop – looking at pressing them and modelling some from clay. Talking about this with colleagues and a new shiny budget
- We did some scouting around – including this great display at Liverpool Museums – who doesn’t love a tower of medals! Real sense of scale. Also produced an ID interactive – using ribbon colour to work out what your medal might be (specific to King’s Regiment from Liverpool)
- Open up discussion of medals – Very BOY in stereotype – military collector fairs, etc. Start to break this down – women got medals too! Some medals are for bravery, but others are for being in a place at a time (service medals) Look at perspective veterans held on medals – not all heroes – often put in drawers – Victory medal tarnished easily and in the 1920s was seen as ‘trashy’ Because of their portability and value, we wanted to help people access medals as they are usually kept in our secure storage.
- Material we worked with – little of it had been accessioned – some of the material had been found in store! Needed to try to trace families for permission (due diligence) Ali: WW1 Medals Interactive: Planning Original brief specified 6 medals + 6 recipients stories + primary audience (KS1-3 History/Art & Design) Lucy: Took longer than anticipated to choose the final material – all new material!Over 100 collection objects?! Numismatics / Social History / Industrial Selection criteria: specific to Leeds collections interesting/new/stories not told before variety of armed services ‘normal’ experiences any related objects and contextual info? include nurse (women’s experiences) good quality *photos? (DJ agreed to do their own photography - delaying project but worth it)
- Wanted to keep it personal – “his brother Samuel looked after them”
- Wanted to keep it of the period – using fonts from our collections, if possible! Example of fonts used 'League Gothic' for the titles and 'Franklin Gothic Regular' for body copy (‘Gothic’ = sans-serif) Franklin Gothic developed in 1902 Lucy: Fonts – accessibility –v- historical accuracy Sent DJ samples and they did further research Some of the early 19thC fonts not suitable
- Lucy: Think: how else can you involve your collections? Making full use of our collections to enrich the user experience – This cotton handkerchief printed with a hand-drawn map of Europe in 1914 was mass-produced for a British domestic market
- Making full use of our collections to enrich the user experience – WW1 handkerchief printed with map of Europe
- Lucy: Holistic ??
- Wanted to be technical, but we couldn’t reflect every single WW1 medal (or every WW1 experience) – particularly those from diverse communities!
- Used numismatic terms – learning language to use is part of the process
- Wanted to be technical -
- Ethical considerations: Heroes / Guardians / Soldiers / Protectors.... DJ’s original tender was all about Heroes and Winning the War Wanted to be true to the collections; also was learning team preference to not be about ‘glory of war’?? Had to put it to the vote: There was a numerical draw between Guardians and Heroes, BUT it was felt that HEROES was a much more contentious term, so Guardians had the balance because of its neutrality
- Ali: In the end we agreed on: 'League Gothic' for the titles and 'Franklin Gothic Regular' for body copy (‘Gothic’ = sans-serif) Franklin Gothic developed in 1902 NB: Block CAPS remain in click-through titles for different sections, though we know they’re not best for accessibility, it was felt they stood out more and complement the graphic elements. And the ‘calls to action’ are in lower case.
- Had to put it to the vote: There was a numerical draw between Guardians and Heroes, BUT it was felt that HEROES was a much more contentious term, so Guardians had the balance because of its neutrality
- We wanted to use 3D technology to create that object-based looking and examining experiene. You create your medal, your can scan it and download it – next stages are to work out how it can be 3D printed – it was stage 2 with the design company, but they went bust!
- See separate info sheet Original spec asked for Flash/Jquery format for compatibility with MyL Discussed with DJ at interview - decided not to use Flash: Flash vs jQuery: DJ recommend jQuery (with HTML 5 and CSS3) mainly due to the lack of cross device support for flash within website use and the added performance power from not needing to rely upon third party plug-ins. jQuery is a future proofed, flexible and widely supported platform which is ideally suited to be mobile and tablet friendly. We would suggest that tablet use is a prime project element when taking into consideration the current investment which schools are making into tablet learning devices. The advantage of flash would be that it would be potentially easier to distribute to the third party websites and could be downloaded as a standalone application. Flash not supported on mobile devices - HTML5 has good mobile browser support. % of our users on mobile? WebGL: 3D medal viewer – not supported by some browsers, but this is improving Responsive design – mobiles (separate version), tablets etc. Browser compatibility! Sits on separate server to MyL – now have option to host future interactives here (annual hosting fee)
- Ali: Testing – medals interactive Feedback from our Teachers’ panel. Invited to launch it at Great Yorkshire Show – BBC World War One at Home tent – this was our main user testing (not ideal!) Really useful observing users – resulted in quite a few modifications. Prior to this, endless sessions with DJ, tweaking and bug rectifying (easier once we started numbering queries – got up to 60 in the end!). Also, as they were based nearby, saved a lot of time and emails by sitting down and going through it with them in detail.
- Unexpected outcomes – family audiences / practical workshops Lucy: Widening participation Joining up collections / learning / outreach Broadens LM&G reach massively, ie schools across the UK would not normally be accessing our numismatics collections. From Dundee to Somerset! Over 80 designs submitted from one school on Remembrance Day
- Also can be used for non-WW1 topics – bravery; helping others; the giving of awards in general. Have had some interesting ones submitted (For friendship; Bradford City FC; for being awesome! Future – more marketing; 3D medal design competition for schools / 3D prints of winners ?
- Ali - Evaluation and feedback MyL panel: some suggestions incorporated into final iteration (medals page) Photos and biographies of real people is an excellent idea as this will help to bring the supporting resources alive and make it ‘real’ for the pupils. Pupils are very interested in hearing true stories of people involved in the war. I do like the letter-writing template as a tool for developing and supporting literacy Also made suggestions for supporting resources on MyL (research into job roles; looking up other servicemen/women; creating their own timelines/maps) Well received at various teachers events we’ve showcased it at. St Matthews Teacher came to WW1 CPD event then used online version & postcards with class – came to find me at NHF to say how much the children had loved it and give me their designs.
- Add your own image – a few unexpected submissions – inc. one from a slightly racist biker gang!
- Ali: Crown Copyright – careful with use of ‘official’ Royal Crowns! (government guidance has sample crowns to use as alternatives) Red Cross ok as it’s not red... Custom Image can be added by users – statement re having copyright holder’s permission Stock images found by DJ – check they’re in public domain
- For Medals interactive, we did the IPR investigations/clearance. For Aviation interactive, we negotiated for Enigma to do it for us – but still need to check!! Lucy: Queried use of RAF roundel and pursued it with MOD marketing dept. Very precise rules – colours, ratios, angles etc.
- Ali: Both interactives put out to tender and 3 shortlisted applicants interviewed (6 applications for medal int.). Chose Digital Junkie (Leeds) and Enigma Interactive (Newcastle) Timescales – took much longer (c.2 months) to get the content together (will look at some of the reasons why!) and much longer (c.2 months) to test/tweak Lessons learned: Lucy: ‘Inherited’ the project (Dan originally worked with Natalie at City Museum) Over-estimate timescales Use same principles as planning for an exhibition:- more time; - narrative; - goals? Planning: Enigma produced GANTT chart (on Tom’s Planner website) showing holidays, windows to allow for any changes etc Excellent collaborative tool, much better than Excel (all editing the same version).