Project: Collections Online
Problem Overview
With a century and a half’s worth of data on objects, inventors,
and archived documents, creating a public-facing portal for the
Science Museum Group’s (SMG) archives was as much about making the
search results engaging as available.
But the real challenge was around working without control over the
data itself (which was still being cleansed and homogenised), or
direct access to the Elasticsearch database managed by a 3rd party!
Approach
With a wealth of information to be made accessible to the public,
starting with a workshop with SMG and their designer was essential to
understanding how to give users the results they needed in a clear
and engaging format.
We used these insights and an iterative approach to features to
develop a search portal that was fast, granular, but also contained
enough interactive features to keep casual users interested. We
learned from users and stakeholders, making improvements across
multiple sprints and engagements.
Solution
Lacking access to the database meant working with and around a busy
3rd party, planning and replanning when their deadlines were not met.
This didn’t faze us! We developed a seriously fast search solution
that was powerful and intelligent enough to provide weighted related
items in addition to direct search results.
The RESTful developer API was then created and extensive
documentation made available in a Github Wiki. Although our API
development time was squeezed due to some excellent user requests for
the public facing site, we got excellent feedback from the community
at our ‘trial by fire’ at the
Science Museum Hack Day!
Key Functionality
- A search website, making all of the Science Museum Group's data and artefacts accessible to the public complete with detailed filtering, images and pagination.
- Search by people (birthplace, date, occupation), objects (categories, date, location, maker, object type, material, display status), documents (image, license, people)
- Search and interactive features allow the public to gain a greater understanding of the museum’s full collection
- An API enabling developers to access the data and create projects, as demonstrated at the Science Museum Hack Day
Technologies
Project Length
22+ Weeks
Jun 2016 - Oct 2016 (Sprint 1 - 10)
Nov 2016 - Dec 2016 (Sprint 11)*
May 2017 (Sprint 12)*
* Additional sprints commissioned to build
further functionality based on user feedback
Implementation Team
System Architect (Security & Performance)
QA Code Reviewer
2 Developers
Scrum Master