A new website design for Te Whare Taonga O Waikato Museum & Gallery

The team at Te Whare Taonga O Waikato Museum had the same website for over 10 years, with minor aesthetic and functional improvements along the way.

Coinciding with a physical redevelopment and rebrand, they needed their online presence to match the physical space. A website that highlighted their unique value to our communities.

Waikato Museum has a large collection of taonga and hosts numerous events, exhibitions, and galleries as one-off, short-term, and permanent exhibitions.

We were tasked with creating a website that brought their new brand identity online and encouraged users to dive in and explore.

With a bold, fresh new brand and seemingly limitless possibilities, we needed to narrow things down and create focus - ensuring we delivered an outcome that helped users find the information they needed in a creative way.  Inviting people to explore and uncover the taonga they’ve been able to bring to the world through their exhibitions and online collection.

We focused on four key areas.

• Telling the story of the Taonga on display and in the museums online collection
• Showcasing the various events and exhibitions
• Delivering a user-friendly website that balances creativity and curiosity
• Giving the museum team full control and flexibility over their content

Thanks to our friends at Daymark, we received a brand identity that allowed us to craft a unique online experience.

With a complex site structure and several key sections, we needed to do some comprehensive planning in collaboration with the museum team. This planning allowed us to explore how users would experience the website and engage with content across:

• Events
• Collections
• Exhibitions
• Information and Resources

We needed to ensure that our proposed information structure would not only allow the museum team to effectively capture and organize their existing content but also empower them with versatile content types that align with and enhance their long-term vision.

This meant creating a flexible framework that could adapt to their evolving needs, support innovative storytelling, and engage visitors in a meaningful way.

By doing so, we aimed to provide a seamless experience that would inspire and inform, while also driving greater interaction and connection with the museum's diverse offerings.

When we were given the opportunity to redesign the Waikato Museum website, we were also given the challenge to tell the story of the Museum Collection. With over 13,000 records digitised from their collection of over 30,000 taonga - the museum team were looking for a way to surface these objects in multiple ways. 

We championed the circle motif and the idea of ‘going down the rabbit hole’ by incorporating a collection gallery as well as specific components designed to showcase collection items using a 'key hole' reveal. This reveal allowed the museum team to showcase and highlight specific aspects of their collection items in both a creative and on-brand way.

Along with the Keyhold element, we implemented a ‘taonga of the day’ feature, allowing the Museum to take over the colour style of the home navigation with an object of the day. Inviting users to dive deeper into the rabbit hole and explore the collection. 

While telling the story of the treasures our wonderful Museum has in its collection was a key goal, the main reason people engage with the museum is to see the current and up-and-coming exhibitions and events.

We didn’t want to just deliver a basic events and exhibitions directory and the museum's brand guidelines give the team a lot of flexibility - flexibility they wanted to incorporate into the design of the website.

This brought about some hefty challenges for both look and feel and usability.

When showcasing events and exhibitions, we’ve enabled the museum to choose a two-colour system for the background and text, which can be derived from the taonga on display.

The two colour system mentioned above is a primary example of delivering creativity, but with creativity comes curiosity, and we wanted to ensure we delivered features that supported translation, delivered clear image captions and enhanced users navigation experience.

Along with this, we wanted to ensure that when blending creativity with curiosity, we incorporated Te Reo to ensure we were championing the genuine inclusive culture that Te Whare Taonga O Waikato Museum has a mandate to uphold. This was achieved through:

• Multi Lingual Content
• Multi Lingual Sign Posting
• Glossary to support Reo First, where appropriate
• Image Captions

These features give the museum the flexibility to ensure visitors have an accessible, inclusive and information-rich experience.