on a positive note, i just caught a glimpse of the metropolitan museum of art’s new website–beautiful work.

Regarding the dataset which you were talking about, all I see is code for Google Analytics. I doubt they are using anything else like Omniture for more detailed analysis of user journeys etc. Who knows how much they have thought about sch things. The notion that they haven’t thought at all about it irks me.

By way of example, if you go to the old Calder artist page it 404s, ie. PAGE NOT FOUND. This is dumb, because it is not like the content has changed. Google and other services advise webmasters to use 301 redirects to advice spiders that the content ha permanently moved and to garner the new address so that indexes can be updated quickly and traffic not lost. Given that on top of this the design of the 404 page s awful hardly helps. Compounding this, from what I can see is that they have NO sitemap.xml file telling the spiders where to find the most up-to-date library of links on the site.

Anyhow, back to the long term use of such tools, unless they are all using the same services its harder to compare like for like, and i doubt anyone would necessarily openly talk about such stats, well perhaps the IMA would. The only way to make sch things as sticking as possible is to make the functionality as simple and as effective as possible to use and to make it relevant to the everyday lives of its users. In terms of prior art, Digg, Delicious and even functionality such as Last.fm’s library and song kicks resources tracker. Forcing people to use one site though is a mistake and embracing many of these Web 2.0 services, as suggested by Nina Simon, is definitely the way to go, people don;t need more places to go, they need better service int he place they use already.

Anyhow, I can’t stay on topic so will hush for now :)

I am especially interested in your comments about the My Collection section, and share your inkling that these features probably don’t get too much repeat use in the long run. It would be interesting to understand more about this aspect. Many are fairly recent additions to museum sites, but I wonder if anyone has shared info on user behavior in these log-in sections.

Excellent post and I am glad to see that others hold the same opinion as me and have taken to lengthy discussion of the topic as have I. You can find my review of the new whitney.org here:

http://www.vincentroman.com/blog/a-review-of-the-new-whitney-website/

Much of which mirrors what you are saying.

To respond to MS, I think that the mission of the museum is important and whether or not the site conveys that is important also, but at the same time, they have a commitment to site and museum visitors to make the experience as accessible and as easy as possible to use. We are not in a game here to figure out how hard we can make it for users to find what they need on the site. This is about common sense and a clean approach to inviting those who are already interest in what you offer, in.

Whether you think the site is cool or not doesn’t belie the fact that there are both legal and unwritten obligations in design sites, and if you aren’t going to follow them you might as well pack up shop now.

Thanks again Perry and to all those wading in on this conversation.

“New” in “New Museum” is pretty obvious, and so is “Modern” in MoMA. Even the abbreviation of MoMA communicates that institution’s values. “New York City Ballet” has its constituent group and its offering in its name. But what is “American Art”?

Anyway, back on topic. I thought Perry’s critique and comments were spot on for the most part, he breaks things down well. Gina B., Francessa, and Andrew provided some additional insight too, thanks for the good read.

I’ve been writing this with the Whitney website in another tab and that throbbing favicon really makes me want to close the tab. It’s almost symbolic of how I feel about the site. The design actually detracts me from the website and the “look what we did” features don’t make up for the overall user experience. The website may be full of great content, but if it is difficult to use and hard to look at, I don’t want to be there. It’s as simple as that.

http://so-il.org/
http://maryping.com/
http://art.yale.edu/

This is avant CSS and graphic design, mostly. Nothing to suggest the discipline to handle a project of this scale, which should have been instantly recognized during the RFP process. It reflects horribly on the museum, not the kids they hired.

I don’t think the New Museum’s site is stale at all. In fact, they have been doing great things with digital art and technology since the 90s (via mark tribe’s work w rhizome etc.); most people in the arts community will acknowledge this much. Also, the site has a ton of great multimedia (photos, audio, video): You should really check it out.

http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/417/urs_fischermarguerite_de_ponty
See where it says “audio,” “video” etc.

I don’t understand why people are taking his critique so personally. Perry made some very valid points, and I think it’s a compliment to the Whitney that people only expect first-rate work from them. I’m sure the firm at the helm did not mean to screw up, but the fact remains that this project is an unmitigated disaster from an IA/UX perspective (see Edward Tufte if you don’t believe me..), and I’m not sure it really works from a visual design perspective (but that’s more subjective). To resort to a cliche, you have to know the rules before you break them.

I for one am happy to see web criticism coming into its own. I thought this was a very well-written piece, and I hope more people approach website critiques with this level of attention and expertise!

Francessca