Harvard Museum of Natural History

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is a natural history museum housed in the University Museum Building, located on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Good web design advantages I’d like to use for reference:

• Homepage functions as an effective guide instead of giving too much information on a crowded homepage.
• Big and simple search bar on the header.
• Small and almost unnoticeable administrator login portal near the footer.

Metropolitan Museum of Art – Visit

The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially “the Met”, is the largest art museum in the United States.

Good web design advantages I’d like to use for reference:

• Long content page that is arranged in a very scannable way, enabling users to quickly grasp key information
• “Plus” and “Minus” icons are embedded into the content to hide extra information.  It speeds up users’ scanning process.
• Clickable Google Map Image that can take users to maps.google.com for route planning.

The Museum of Science and Industry of Chicago- Getting Here

The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago is the largest science center in the Western Hemisphere.  It is housed in the former Palace of Fine Arts from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

Good web design advantages I’d like to use for reference:

• Instead of adding all the pages under the navigation bar, they put most pages under the secondary navigation in sidebar on each relevant page.
• Putting “by car”, “by bus”, “by train”, and “by bike” under the types of transportation menu bar. In this way, they created a shorter page and help their users find relevant information faster.
• The typefaces for the content on each page are carefully chosen to provide a both scannable and pleasing reading experience for their users.

Essig Museum of Entomology

The Essig Museum of Entomology is a research museum dedicated to terrestrial arthropods, located at the University of California at Berkeley.

In terms of the web design of this entomology museum:

• The home page content is not very scannable.
• The museum logo is so large that it takes a large proportion of space above the fold.
• The navigation bar is really long. It would be better if the menu items could be reorganized and combined to improve user-experience

Oregon State University Arthropod Collection

The Oregon State Arthropod Collection is the largest entomological research collection in the Pacific Northwest with a history extending back into the early years of the Oregon State College.

In terms of the web design of this entomology museum:

• The biggest problem is the static specimen drawer picture that occupies the whole area above the fold. It confused me quite a bit at the beginning, for one second I wasn’t sure what to do.
• Besides that, I really like the short and simple navigation bar.

M.T. James Museum

The James Collection ranks as one of the largest research and reference collections of insects in the Pacific Northwest and is an important and critical resource of the Washington State University and entomological community.

In terms of the web design of this entomology museum:

• The website design is contemporary.
• The title of the museum video introduction however is so large that it takes too much of the user’s attention.
• Font size of the left navigation bar is relatively too small.
• Also the Washington State University logo is misleading as users intuitively click that logo, expecting to go to the home page of the entomology department of WSU.