Sumo - Work - Digital - Revealing Histories - Website design for museum education project

Mobile friendly site

Revealing Histories

Digital

Our digital team work exclusively on developing websites for the cultural sector, this focus has allowed us to develop an exclusive content management system designed specifically to drive and engage audiences.

Our Geisha CMS scales to work on everything from the smallest festival website, to large and complex online museum collections.

Perhaps what our digital team are best known for, is creating websites which invite participation, whether this is asking for an opinion on what makes great art or connecting the public with curators at the world's most famous museums.

Key services

Hosting and support
User testing
Web design
Web build
Research, strategy & planning

Challenge

The website is a multi-layered resource exploring the connections between the North West of England and transatlantic slavery. It is the culmination of an extensive project by a group of museums in Greater Manchester.

The site was to be redesigned and restructured to provide more apparent journeys through the content and to make better use of museum objects as learning tools.
Idea

Sumo proposed to emphasise the keystone question of the site, 'How much did Manchester profit from slavery?', and to restructure the content into between ten and twenty clear themes within this, each containing museum objects, articles, video and places. We then worked extensively with the Renaissance North West team to refine this system and to guide users through the content from different approaches.
Response

A round of user testing carried out with the community, research and education users confirmed that the new information architecture and user interfaces were liked and understood by a range of audiences.

The site was independently assessed for accessibility to WAI AA standards and we have also advised the editorial team on creating accessible and user-friendly content.

Sumo were a pleasure to work with – they made a challenging project seem achievable with their ‘can do’ attitude. Their attention to detail, and willingness to listen and respond to client requirements, was really valuable. The CMS system was very user-friendly and the end result works well for a range of different users.

Dr Katherine Hann
Freelance Heritage Consultant for Renaissance North West