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Editorial | November 27, 2009

Another Take on the New Whitney Website

01._synthetic_11_359I don’t mean to beat a dead horse but Vincent Roman has posted an outstanding review of the Whitney’s new website. He covers Javascript breakage, 404 problems, and SEO issues.  Way more technical than my review and therefore quite worthwhile.

I hope the critical coverage the Whitney’s new site has been receiving

a) demonstrates that people care about museum websites and that they are worth holding to a high standard

b) encourages the Whitney to redesign their site

c) provides recommendations to the Whitney’s staff when the dust settles from the relaunch and they contract with a new firm to fix it

For the record – reviews from Edward Tufte and Mediaite and my review. User comments are interesting and useful, too.

  • http://www.vincentroman.com/blog/ Vincent Roman

    May I add that I also posted comments on their portfolio. Seems those in the YAY camp are talking about how great the content open the site is which has NOTHING to do with the poor design principles Linked By Air engender.

    Thanks Perry … Let’s go kick anus together!

  • Jenene

    I really appreciate the time all of you both have put into critiquing this project. Sadly, I doubt the Whitney web team is even aware of the conversation surrounding this tragically botched attempt. As for Linked by Air, judging by their site, it seems that the agency’s principals confuse ignorance of web best practices with iconoclasm. All to say, I have serious doubts that the museum will redesign this site, esp. in a time of budget cuts, etc.

    Also, I concur with VR re the content management system that’s getting a lot of press. The wiki principles guiding this CMS have nothing to do with the actual site design. Also, how is this site actually a wiki if the only contributors are museum staff? And how is that decentralized content production? This functionality exists in most off-the-shelf CMS by implementing, um, different usernames, passwords and levels of access. A non issue that was given too much space in the Mediaite review.

    Again, I think it’s great that you both, with Edward Tufte, are calling out the museum to set the bar higher for themselves and its patrons. It would be great if they took notice and rectified some of the problems we’ve all identified.

  • http://www.vincentroman.com Vincent Roman

    Jenene,

    Thanks. I am sure those at the Whitney are aware of the writings, as the review at least on my blog has been seen some 7/8 times by someone from the institution. Whether these visits are by someone of consequence or someone who can make a difference who knows, but at least persons there might be taking it all in. I think it would be a travesty if they did not.

    Linked By Air certainly know about it. Yes their site is shit, and by proxy the Whitney. If they don’t know about it they are blind, death and dumb. On their blog they have a place for comments under each project and there are people discussing it there too (http://blog.linkedbyair.net/2009/11/12/whitney-org). From what I could tell there are those who hate it and those who think the content are great and unable to separate the content from the design. That being said my comment to that extent of some 12+ hours ago hasn’t been accepted by the moderator yet. I can only assume the webmaster is enjoying a nap at home stuffed full like a turkey this thanksgiving.

    The CMS doesn’t have to be a straitjacket nor does maximum configurability have to be an excuse for poor design. No doubt I could create a script to rewrite the entire design in CSS and make it look a whole lot better, but then again the structure and available data has its only flaws and elements are, as discussed, completely missing.

    In this time of budget cuts I am sure they could have saved time and money by using some free open source content management systems and developing plugins for them and a site specific theme. I suppose the problem with that is that it wouldn’t make LBA any money and it requires foresight on the part of the IT department at the Whitney. Certainly it isn’t the answer to all their problems but then no system is ever ALL that, even what LBA built I am sure. If the front end is so shockingly designed how could the back end design be much prettier either? And this notion of decentralized content production, not any excuse for poor design either.

    Yes it would be great if people at the Whitney listened and I would be happy to get involved further for them on it at a non-for-profit rate, and no doubt it won’t be the last you hear from me on this score, but alas despite so much drum beating by all I doubt much will come of it.

    Thanks again.

  • Jenene

    Vincent, that’s good to hear, actually. You made some excellent points about SEO, which should be a priority for any organization looking to well attract visitors, increase “brand” awareness, sell products…make money. On that note, it’s worth noting the meta description that appears on the Google search results page for the Whitney Museum: “Offers art books, household objects, stationery, toys, and accessories related to twentieth and twenty-first century American art.” (TO WHITNEY STAFF: YOU MIGHT WANT TO CHANGE THAT) Just shocking for a museum that regular incorporates multimedia into its exhibition space to reveal such total ignorance about the internet.

  • http://www.vincentroman.com Vincent Roman

    Damn it, having trouble posting on the Whitney stream over on the Edward Tufte site and want to make what I wrote public. Annoyingly his email is nowhere to be found on the site. Anyhow Here is what I wrote there:

    “I spent my own time writing up a review of the new Whitney web site in the complete absence of any other reviews. In fact I made the rather poor assumption that no one would be as shocked and as driven to write there own review as I was. Interestingly in this isolation I still seem to have come to the same, or very similar, conclusions, and it was only when Perry commented on my review that I realised there was a ground swell of opposition to the new design out there.

    All that being said, I spent some more time digging around the new Whitney web site this morning and signed up for the sake of testing their, I must admit, pretty COOL features, and yet again began to wince at the the end result.

    The idea in itself is great and I love it, despite being ill-named, but the end functionality really sucks. Being able to essentially ‘bookmark’ anything on the site into your, let’s call it ‘library’, you end up with a very strange scenario where when you view the slide show and you get slides with NO content on them, or icons for podcasts, when in effect you are simply trying to build your own gallery out of the collection the Whitney has.

    I could rock on about the shortcomings of the features and enhancements that would vastly improvement, but that’s likely best for another blog post sometime in the not too distant future.

    I suppose what concerns me most out of all this is that by using Linked By Air’s custom and proprietary system the museum is tied to that single company and, as far as I can see, poor web development services.”

  • GZ

    To your last point, that’s probably why the company hoisted their proprietary CMS on the client. It effectively shackles the museum to Linked by Air for a long time… I also tried their “Collection” feature, and am confused by it. It seems like a collection of bookmarks, nothing more or less. Am I missing something? …BTW, I also tried leaving a comment over at the agency’s website, but have not seen it approved yet.

  • http://www.nirvanacanada.com web designing Vancouver

    Wow new New Whitney Website, it looks so creative. Just awesome to watch. congrats…

  • http://www.vincentroman.com Vincent Roman

    Oz – I agree on both points. Are you missing something, not sure, I don’t think so, but the slideshow function which I like is made a mockery of by the fact you are looking at pages and not images. And any description you write is limited to X words, though of course they don’t tell you that, neither do they tell you by what terms you entry of data are governed. Is it merely for my own consumption or will others read and USE it? The T&Cs look like standard ones not necessarily tailored for the specific functions on the site.

  • pixel pusher
  • http://www.vincentroman.com/blog/ Vincent Roman

    Thanks for the tip off, hadn’t bothered looking back over their site but now that you linked to it I will probably respond blow-by-blow. I already have ideas formulating for a second post, but why bother with analyzing functionality when I can take them apart on their own works. Nothing quite like explaining away your inability to implement 301 redirects. That’s hardly a case of some like it and some hate it. Either you know your shizzle or your dont.