Cultural heritage online : the impact of decision-making factors on the design of New Zealand's cultural heritage web resources

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interface design of online cultural heritage web resources and to see how the impact of decision making has had on this. This study has investigated the decision making process in relation to how the decisions were made during the design and creation of the online collection as well as investigating the final product to understand the whole design process. This problem was undertaken through a mixed method enquiry, with both a quantitative content analysis of the interface designs and a qualitative email questionnaire. The findings outline the key visual design characteristics of cultural heritage interface design as well as establishing the level of use of best practice website and interface guidelines. Alongside this how the organisations made decisions during the creation of the resources have been identified and the effect that the decisions have had on the interface design examined.