Museum of Freemasonry
The Challenge
The Museum of Freemasonry had previously conducted research around audience perception, and found that the organisation was generally perceived as being secretive, niche and uninviting.
This reputation is the hallmark of the Freemasons and something of a unique selling point. When looking to redesign and modernise their website, the Museum of Freemasonry therefore wanted to combine garnering greater audience engagement and awareness, while playing with this established sense of secrecy.
Un.titled delivered a new website for the museum that confidently represents our collections and brand. Through working with Un.titled we better understand our audience’s online needs so we can now offer a more dynamic experience all round.
Barry Hughes, Marketing and Communications Manager
The Solution
The Un.titled team worked with the Museum of Freemasonry to create a clear set of both objectives and personas as part of the redevelopment and redesign process. This approach helped formalise the goals of the project and allowed us to have a shared understanding of the audiences we wanted to reach and engage with on a deeper level.
This naturally fed into Un.titled’s UX work. While ease of use and accessibility were discussed, much of the conversation centred around the museum’s ‘What’s On’ offering.
Services
With the museum running regular talks, workshops and different types of exhibitions, as well as daily and specialised tours, this diversity meant that the Un.titled team needed to develop a deeper understanding of what was on offer before building relevant, separate interfaces for each type of event.
Embracing user personas helped pin down exactly what to include for each interface, boosting the chances of users planning visits, carrying out research or buying tickets for events or memberships.
Reflecting the hidden air of mystery around the Freemasons, our visual design team crafted a banner with a ‘spotlight effect' that offers a limited view of the main image but which reveals more as the user interacts with the page. This instant element of ‘discovery’ is there as soon as a user lands on the site.
The design also incorporates geometric influences inspired by the museum’s lovely new branding (redeveloped by specialist branding agency Ascend Studio). Before Un.titled started working with the museum, our team worked with the Ascend to ensure we were heading down the right path of execution for their new digital presence and helping to ensure a coherent experience online as well as offline.
The homepage features a simple animated, angled line that encourages visitors to scroll down and discover more about the museum, while subtle micro interactions across the site add further refinement to the design and to ensure maximum visual impact. To support a clear, uncluttered structure the site also uses large, bold typography.
As with all our sites, the museum’s editorial team can embed images, video, audio and attachments throughout the site. They have full editorial control throughout.
Our team also worked to enhance the storytelling elements of the site. We developed a native, alternative solution to the previously used Issuu publishing platform, allowing for a graceful, seamless and integrated storytelling feature.
Additional highlights include slides on the stories section of the site, while interactive manuscripts are available to view to help support research.
The intent is that by offering an inspiring online experience, site visitors will be more inclined to become physical visitors and plan a trip to view the museum for themselves. The site also helps facilitate physical visits by delivering clear and concise information on opening times, booking and accessibility.
Un.titled delivered a new website for the museum that confidently represents our collections and brand. Through working with Un.titled we better understand our audience’s online needs so we can now offer a more dynamic experience all round.
Barry Hughes, Marketing and Communications Manager, Museum of Freemasonry
