The nominated website is https://museum.wa.gov.au/museums/ and it is designed for Western Australian Museum. There are six museum sites located in Western Australia and the website provides the information on the six sites. The Western Australian Museum was established in the year 1891 and was referred as Geological Museum at that time. The website provides the details and history of the museum along with the exhibitions and events, and research & collections available in the museum.
The main features of the website have been listed below.
There are a lot of positive aspects that are associated with the website. The primary aim of the site is to provide the users with the information regarding Western Australian Museum and to enhance the user experience and usability of the site. The users must have the ease of usage and the web site elements shall be designed in such a manner that the users understand each of the site elements on their own.
There is search functionality present at the top right of the site to allow the users to search for their desired information (Issa and Isaias, 2014).
Search Functionality (Wa, 2018)
The functionality enhances the site usability and provides the ability to interact with the system by entering the search keyword. The users can directly access their desired function or information instead of browsing through different web pages to get to the same.
There is a Contact Us page created for the web site and the link for the same is visible at the top right section of the site. The link is easy to locate and access. The page provides the map, addresses, and contact information for each of the museum sites. The users may utilize the information to gain further details about the museum or make their enquiries.
Contact Us Page (Wa, 2018)
Social media integration is one of the prime user requirements in the current times. It is because the use of social media networking has enhanced over the past few years. The web site provides the social media integration for the accounts, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram (Proctor and Vu, 2015).
Social Media Integration (Wa, 2018)
The footer section of the website allows the users to connect with these platforms and the respective links are provided. The usability and interaction of the web site is enhanced with the addition of this functionality.
The users usually get confused about the functions of the site and find it difficult to connect with it in case of the absence of a site map. A site map is a detailed point wise flow of the web pages and sub-pages that are present. Also, the naming of the page is done as per the functionality provided by the site. The primary links of the site are included in the site map of the Western Australian Museum so that the flow of pages can be obtained with ease. It leads to the enhancement of user experience with the site (Blair-Early and Zender, 2008).
Site Map (Wa, 2018)
The users are also provided with the link to the museum shop. The museum shop provides the option to add products to the cart and make purchase. The cart is updated as soon as the user adds a product to the cart. The item count and the total price are updated with the addition of the items to the cart. The site usability is upgraded with the addition of this functionality.
Museum Shop Page (Wa, 2018)
The website is also evaluated in the different resolutions, such as mobile hi-resolution in the landscape mode. There is no over-scrolling on any of the web pages and the navigation on the page and between the pages is also smooth (Sethumadhavan, 2013).
There are a few negative aspects that are associated with the site.
The primary drawback is the presence of too many whitespaces on the site. On the home page of the web site with the URL as https://museum.wa.gov.au/museums/, there is a brief description provided about the museums. There is unnecessary space present after the textual content. On the right panel of the site, there is a list of options provided. After the end of the panel, there is also whitespace present across all the web pages.
Museums Page (Wa, 2018)
The presence of such whitespaces is not appreciated by the users and tends to bring down the user experience.
The web site is also required to be responsive so that the usability and user experience is maximized. It has been evaluated in the mobile hi-resolution in portrait mode and there are certain gaps found in this mode. One such gap is the inability to look through the search box to carry out the search functionality (Lee et al., 2010).
Museums Page in Portrait Mode (Wa, 2018)
In the desktop resolution and mobile landscape mode, there is a search box provided aside the search link. The user gets to enter the keyword in the box and make the search. However, the box goes missing in the portrait mode. This may cause confusion for the users and may deteriorate the user experience. The options as site map, accessibility, and Contact Us also go missing in this mode.
Consistency across the web pages is a necessity that is required to be maintained. It refers to the ability of the site to maintain the same flow of elements, layout, and color scheme across all the web pages and resolutions. However, the consistency is disturbed in the portrait mode as certain options go missing (Bollini, 2017).
The scrolling on the pages shall be restricted to a certain limit as too much scrolling on the site disturbs the user experience. In the portrait mode of the site, there is too much scrolling on almost all the web pages.
The review is carried out by Samantha. She is a friend and is 32 years of age. Samantha works as a Fashion Designer with one of the top firms of the city. She is an active web user and access web for personal and professional tasks.
She reviewed the site on her laptop enabled with Windows Operating System and used Google Chrome as the web browser to evaluate the site. She could understand the theme of the site from the logo of Western Australian Museums present at the top of the page. She could also browse through the museum details and took virtual tour of one of the museums.
There were certain areas that she struggled with. One such area was the visual appeal of the site. She found the site too plain and did not like the color scheme of the site.
The second review is carried out by Robin. He is a friend and is 51 years of age. He works as a civil engineer with a construction firm.
Robin accessed and evaluated the site on his iPhone. He was not very impressed with the layout and found it hard to look for the options and features, such as contact us, site map, search function, and many more. He also got tired of scrolling through the main page and did not appreciate the whitespaces present on the pages. He could get the theme and purpose of the site from the contents included on the home page and the logo of the museum.
There are certain recommendations for improving the web site to enhance the Human Computer Interaction and user experience.
The use and incorporation of the above set of features will lead to enhanced human computer interaction and improved user experience.
References
Blair-Early, A. and Zender, M. (2008). User Interface Design Principles for Interaction Design. Design Issues, 24(3), pp.85-107.
Bollini, L. (2017). Beautiful interfaces. From user experience to user interface design. The Design Journal, 20(sup1), pp.S89-S101.
Issa, T. and Isaias, P. (2014). Promoting Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Guidelines and Principles Through Reflective Journal Assessment. Emerging Research and Trends in Interactivity and the Human-Computer Interface, pp.375-394.
Lee, G., Eastman, C., Taunk, T. and Ho, C. (2010). Usability principles and best practices for the user interface design of complex 3D architectural design and engineering tools. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 68(1-2), pp.90-104.
Majid, E., Kamaruddin, N. and Mansor, Z. (2015). Adaptation of usability principles in responsive web design technique for e-commerce development. 2015 International Conference on Electrical Engineering and Informatics (ICEEI).
Proctor, R. and Vu, K. (2015). Principles for Designing Interfaces Compatible With Human Information Processing. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 32(1), pp.2-22.
Punchoojit, L. and Hongwarittorrn, N. (2017). Usability Studies on Mobile User Interface Design Patterns: A Systematic Literature Review. Advances in Human-Computer Interaction, 2017, pp.1-22.
Sethumadhavan, A. (2013). Principles for Designing Good User Interfaces. Ergonomics in Design: The Quarterly of Human Factors Applications, 21(1), pp.33-33.
Shneiderman, B. and Plaisant, C. (1987). Designing the user interface strategies for effective human-computer interaction. ACM SIGBIO Newsletter, 9(1), p.6.
Wa (2018). Museums | Western Australian Museum. [online] Western Australian Museum. Available at: https://museum.wa.gov.au/museums/ [Accessed 3 Aug. 2018].
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