Producing Online Heritage Projects

1. Project Planning

1.2 Crafting the Concept

The first, and certainly most significant, step in planning online content creation is to envision the concept. Concept creation takes place in two distinct phases. First comes the idea for a thematic concept, meaning the overall approach you plan to take with your material.

Hold a brainstorming session with staff members and present your preliminary idea to the museum board. These people understand your museum's needs and will give you honest advice and feedback. Talk to other heritage professionals about your idea and be sure to consider possible partnerships. Give everyone a chance to voice concerns you may not be aware of, especially any that may be directly related to the production process.

A thematic concept is a coherent storyboard or conceptual framework fashioned from several smaller ideas. Its purpose is to interpret your content in a way that is as compelling as possible to your target audience(s), and to help meet your project goals by making the most of the online medium and available budgets. With this thematic concept in mind, you and colleagues involved at the concept development stage can start working through themes and sub-themes, and begin planning the development process. Having done your initial research, you may also want to consult other colleagues, stakeholders and members of your audience target groups as you continue to refine your concept.

The concept and the online content development needed to bring it to life will have a significant impact on the selection of team members, the research and the budget. Once you establish a project team, its members will continue to work on crystallizing the concept and developing sub-themes based on further research and content selection.

Once you have a fully articulated thematic concept, it is time for the second phase of concept development. The Web designer translates your storyboard into the online medium, and gives it full visual (and perhaps auditory) expression in the form of a Web concept design. The best virtual exhibition concepts feature powerful designs that are rooted in strong thematic conception.

For example, when CHIN develops a virtual exhibition, it has an audience in mind, an identified need and an outline of the preliminary goals. CHIN begins by creating the concept and envisioning its expression in a virtual exhibition. Museum partners are asked to contribute to the development process, and to get involved in further work on the overall thematic concept, sub-themes and content, as well as concept design.

Visit the VMC Web site ³ to review the array of concepts that have been developed into virtual exhibitions. Other Web portals or searches may also give you additional ideas for developing content that is effectively presented to take advantage of the digital medium.

Be sure to coordinate your concept with your institution's mandate, with the goals you have articulated, and the needs of the target audience you have identified and researched. This will strengthen the concept and sub-themes, and enhance the end result.

Expert Advice

Don't be shy when brainstorming your concept. Sometimes an idea that seems too costly or even a little crazy helps shape the final approach!

Questions to ask when crafting a thematic concept:

• Does the concept work within the museum's mandate?
• Does it fill an identified niche or address a need?
• Is it achievable with available budgets and resources?
• Can you secure copyright clearance for the content?
• Can its success be measured?

Questions to ask when evaluating a concept design:

• Does the concept design fully express the intent of the thematic concept?
• Is it consistent with the aesthetic sensibilities of your target audience(s)?
• Does it meet audience needs?
• Does it optimize the possibilities of the online medium?
• Does the target audience have the latest technology to access the product?
• Will it result in a product that your museum can launch and maintain online with the available resources?

During conceptual planning, you can identify issues such as funds required or the skill set needed in-house to complete your project. This in turn allows you to fill any gaps in your project plan such as applying for additional funding, sending staff on a Web development course, or seeking assistance to secure copyright clearance for certain materials.

Will Your Concept and Content Appeal to Your Audience?

You now have a fully articulated thematic concept, expressed in a concept design. But before you spend a lot of time and money developing your project, it is recommended that you test your concept on your target audience. There are a number of low-cost ways to do this that do not require a lot of time. Early testing can pay big dividends by allowing you to gather valuable information so that you can make well-informed project decisions and a more successful product.

Testing your concept does not mean you have to slow down or stop the rest of your plans. While testing your concept, you can continue going over the instructions in this handbook.

Holding an informal evaluation session with a few museum volunteers and members can provide useful feedback. If your museum runs educational tours and activities for school groups and your target audience includes such groups, consider approaching the school board to ask whether some time could be spent with some of these groups following their museum visits to explore the museum's plans for a new virtual exhibition or interactive game.

Give them a clear idea of your project and ask specific questions to guide responses. Answer all the participants' questions. If your project is aimed at a new audience or is about a new issue or theme for your current audience, you may want to consider using innovative methods to evaluate the concept.

If you create a storyboard or interactive plan, a navigational plan and a project description, you can gather information from people online and in person. When gathering responses, you may find that very few people are interested in an interactive feature that would have taken a lot of work to produce; or that the questions they ask about content lead you to use a different approach in the writing, the navigation structure or the selection of materials.

Section 2.2, Story Line and Materials, provides more information on creating a storyboard or interactive plan. See section 2.5, Evaluating Your Product in Development, for more details on focus group testing and surveys.

See Appendix A for a sample questionnaire, titled Sample Planning Research Focus Group Evaluation Questionnaire, and Appendix B, which contains the document, Sample Planning Research Focus Group Evaluation Recorded Responses, recording the results a project manager obtained by meeting a group of elementary school children. These research results were part of the planning process, and were used to note the children's interest in this topic and other sites available on the Internet.