Welcome to the new National Galleries of Scotland website
Ashley Beamer and Christopher Ganley
With our mass digitisation programme well underway and our new collections website deployed, the National Galleries of Scotland enters the second phase of major development on the new website.
The aim of phase 2 of the “Systems of Engagement” project, which began in July 2016, was to release incrementally, deploying new sections of the site until we were able to ‘turn off’ our old website; the ideal deadline being March 2017.
Agile Development
Using an Agile method of software development, namely Scrum and Kanban, we ensured code releases that took place quickly and often. This methodology meant that we could respond quickly to newly gathered requirements and remain focused on high priority tasks.
We undertook UX research, gathered requirements from Galleries staff, prioritised them, and created user stories and acceptance criteria to discuss with the UX/design team and developers. We developed using two week sprints holding Scrum ceremonies including sprint planning and refinement, daily standups, and retrospectives.
Features (October 2016 launch)
First came Features. Features are longer form unique quality articles that focus on artworks, artists, projects, and themes. They include text, images and other media, providing a significant learning resource about the collection.
The ‘story-telling’ nature of Features, with relationships to other types of content, attempts to create intuitive and enjoyable user journeys.
We developed Features to have an element of flexibility. The CMS administrator builds Features by creating creating ‘lanes’ of content. This allows staff to customise pages for publication, incorporating different layouts for different lanes.
Online Shop (November 2016 launch)
Approaching the end of 2016 we decided to develop and release the online shop. With the checkout process already in place for the custom prints purchase, the new gift shop simply slotted into the functionality as a new ‘product type’.
With the online shop fully integrated, we were able to move away from a separate shop microsite and provide an interface where the user can purchase multiple products types from different parts of the site. The new unified basketing system was an important building block to have in place for the upcoming development which included ticketing, membership, and donation purchasing.
Our ultimate goal was to design and develop a basket system that could include all of our different product types but at the same time be very simple to use for our customers.
Visit (December 2016 launch)
The new visit section is aimed at members of the public who want to physically visit one of the galleries. For this section it was important that we incorporated new brand guidelines, making it clear that there are three separate gallery locations, one of which (the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) has two gallery buildings.
Our goal was to create a clean and simple interface where all relevant information could be found quickly and easily from any device. It was important to keep in mind that many visitors access this section of the website from a mobile device while travelling in Edinburgh or even from inside one of the galleries.
Exhibitions and Events (March 2017 launch)
The inclusion of the exhibitions and events was one of the final pieces of the redevelopment.
We wanted to bring together all of the information and related content about a particular exhibition onto a single beautifully custom-designed page.
Our exhibitions listing page aims to differentiate between short term temporary exhibitions and longer term permanent collection displays.
The exhibition pages themselves offer basic information about duration and gallery location, and also provide exhibition reviews and summary information, including highlighted artworks, audio and video content, and related materials to inform potential visitors of the exhibition content.
We decided that when exhibitions have past they should remain on the website as an invaluable research resource and record of our public programme.
For paid temporary exhibitions we now offer online e-ticketing so members of the public can purchase tickets ahead of time and better plan their National Galleries of Scotland visit.
Events are now simple to navigate and allow the user to filter by audience, type of event, and gallery location, as well as date range. Event pages offer online booking for free stock controlled events as well as e-ticket purchasing for paid events.
Donations, Memberships (March 2017 launch)
Our new Support section of the website offers information on how to become more involved with the Galleries. This includes an online donation facility as well as a range of ‘Our Friends’ membership packages including student, solo, duo, and philanthropic memberships.
Friends members can access events specifically tailored to them.
Artist Pages and Glossary Pages (September 2017 launch)
Over the summer we planned, designed and developed new artist pages and glossary pages for the site.
Although we have over 12,000 artists in our collections, the new artist A-Z browser offers nearly 1,500 of our more well-known artists. The artist pages provide an excellent learning resource for educators including the Galleries’ own Education department.
Each artist page features a key artwork, bibliographical information including data feeds from both Wikipedia and the Getty (whenever possible), access to all artworks in our collection by that artist, as well as other related content including exhibitions, features, and glossary terms.
The Glossary A-Z browser provides hundreds of terms for the user to explore. Glossary pages also bring together relevant information to create a valuable introductory learning resource for audiences.
What’s next?
Importantly we have embraced the notion of continuous improvement at the Galleries and are undergoing usability testing with members of the public to see how the interface and user journeys work for our various audiences. We look forward to continuing this usability work over the next several months and will make any adjustments as needed.
On the data side of things, we want to focus on improving our catalogue data to ensure standardisation and make querying and filtering on artworks more effective. Furthermore the Galleries are looking at how we can make the data and images more open and accessible through our own digital channels and through partnership websites.
We are very excited about the new website and with the architecture in place we’re now able to enter into a new phase of digital engagement at the Galleries.
Special thanks to the talented team at Cello Signal, Edinburgh, whose hard work helped to get us where we are now.
