Jemima,
carousel is a very interesting application and I would welcome more
of these kind of visual, non-textual ways of exploring collections,
which is the way physical museums work :-)
However, the application seems to have been rolled out a bit too soon
for its own good. I mean:
- it's not clear what clicking on a work does. Does it come out with
similar works, associated by (invisible) keywords? Or are they
totally unrelated?
- if the associations are made by keywords, would it be such a bad
idea to show what those keywords are and allow people to understand a
bit more?
- why it is not possible to have at least some basic caption
immediately, or on click, visible with each image, as if the text is
not a way to navigate the collection and it is true, as you say, that
visitors might not know the name of what they search or like, but I
would bet they would want to!
- having info opening a separate window is easy, but a bit cheeky and
a killer in terms of usability and accessibility. We are tempted to
use it ourselves at times, but we always refrain, trying to find
different ways. At present you always open new windows: if visitors
forget to close them, they end up having tens on the screen.
- the role of favourites: it seems that once I have put a work on the
list, I cannot click on it anymore, or can I? Also, would that list
inform what happens on the left (i.e. the 9 panel work browser)? It
could be interesting to consider the favourites as the best and most
complex expression of a visitor's taste, hence presenting, in the
browser, works related to the corpus of the favourites.
Nice try. I'm sure it'll get better!
Kind regards, Cristiano
Cristiano Bianchi
keepthinking ltd
Bull Inn Court
15 Maiden Lane
London WC2E 7NG
Just launched: National Galleries of Scotland Online Collections
http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collections/
tel. +44(0)20 7240 8014
fax +44(0)20 7240 8015
mobile (uk) +44(0)7939 041169
mobile (it) +39 329 533 4469
web www.keepthinking.it
On 23 Aug 2005, at 10:33, Jemima Rellie wrote:
> Hi all and Tate Online is delighted to announce the launch of a new,
> visual search interface, based on technology developed by BT.
>
> Called Carousel (http://www.tate.org.uk/collection/carousel/), it
> presents a shuffled selection of some 2000 artworks from Tate's
> Collection which evolves as the visitor engages with individual
> pieces.
> It is intended to complement the range of text based search options
> offered at www.tate.org.uk, and help visitors who know what they like
> but not necessarily what it is called.
>
> This is release 1.0 of the application - and we already have a
> reasonable wish list for future roll-outs, but do please let us know
> what you think of it so far.
>
> Hope all are well and enjoying Summer,
>
> Jemima
>
>
> ----------------------------------------
> Jemima Rellie
> Head of Digital Programmes
> www.tate.org.uk
> +44 (0)20 7887 8648
>
|