MOSI WEBSITE
The Museum of Science and Industry is an educational institution dedicated to advancing public knowledge and curiosity of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). MOSI inspires people of all ages through its events and exhibitions, summer camps, and offers resources as a special events venue.
MOSI came to Absolute Mobile Solutions with a veritable challenge: they wanted to increase engagements with their visitors beyond the physical walls of the museum. That’s when Absolute began to create a custom web design strategy that would increase visitor engagements, and bring the MOSI website to a modern, responsive design that would capture visitor’s attention the way their exhibits do.
DISCOVERY PHASE
Uncovering Challenges
Absolute Mobile Solutions held weekly meetings with the marketing and communications teams at MOSI during this time frame to establish known challenges, to outline the goals of the new website, and to discover hidden challenges that nobody had been aware of.
Creative Personas
Since MOSI attracts three separate audiences – educators, people seeking a venue for special events, and the general public – Absolute Mobile Solutions began to remap the entire website’s information architecture with these three core audiences in mind.
Competitive Analysis
Absolute Mobile Solutions examined how other museums designed their websites in ways that successfully showcased their programs and features, including event registration, exhibit schedules, and general information. We also examined the MOSI’s current web strategy to determine strengths and opportunities for growth. Through this careful analysis of the environment within the museum and the world outside of it, we created a strategy for the new design.
STRATEGIC PHASE
We met regularly and collaborated with the team at MOSI to devise a design and strategy that would allow the website to not only meet, but exceed the goals set forth in the discovery phase, along with best practices for design and user experience.
DESIGN PHASE
Design
Another key objective for this MOSI website project was to design, build and execute a world-class, modern interface that is visually appealing and attracts visitor engagement. Beautiful, inspiring design would be a natural extension to how MOSI’s objective is to increase awareness of STEM and inspiring the community of Tampa Bay.
Mock-up Development
Based on the design and functionality requirements, Absolute created several mock-ups across all platforms, including mobile and tablet. The new website has a responsive design allowing information to be presented the same way – and looked stunning – on any device.
EXECUTION PHASE
One of the central challenges on the old MOSI site was that the information about displays, exhibits and summer camps were not optimally structured with the user’s experience in mind.
Absolute built “Plan Your Visit” - an online platform that allowed users to learn about the museum’s exhibits, programs and events by the user personalizing their preferences. Based on their interest, age and accessibility level, users can view the museum’s programs and plan their trip most effectively. After site development, testing, and adjustment based on user feedback, the new Florida Holocaust Museum website was launched.
We completed the project by training the museum’s staff on using the registration systems and updating content.
RESULTS
Absolute Mobile Solutions won numerous awards for its Excellence in Website Design for the MOSI website including a Bronze Stevie, a Silver Horizon Interactive Award, a Gold Hermes Creative award, and a Silver Davey Award. The Davey Awards is a prestigious award judged and overseen by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts (AIVA), a 700+ member organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media.
“When you’re a science and technology center like MOSI, you need an online presence that’s modern and compelling – but it still has to be usable and approachable for every kind of guest. By teaming up with Absolute Mobile Solutions, we were able to go behind the scenes and break down what our visitors were really looking for. Then we used that knowledge to build the site in fresh ways to get potential guests more excited, more quickly, about becoming customers and visiting MOSI.
