NHHC Website
The NHHC's mission is to Collect, preserve, protect and make available the artifacts, documents, and art that best embody naval history and heritage. As part of this effort, I assisted in the redesign and development of a CMS-based website.
Last year I had the privilege of creating the front-end templates for the Navy History & Heritage Command's new website, which was built using the Adobe Experience Manager (AEM, formerly CQ). Over several months I worked with a team of developers and took over design responsibilites after the wireframing phase. NHHC had several competing priorties during early development, including museums, the Navy Library, and an underwater archeology division. Additionally, the website had to simultaneously cater to students, researchers, active-duty servicemen and retirees. One more caveat was the technical requirement to base design and development in Internet Explorer 8 (I can imagine you fellow web designers shuddering in terror). NHHC is still using its former website until the new site goes live in fall 2014.
I'm not crazy about the image carousel, and refer to this quote: "Carousels exist to keep people from beating the shit out of each other in meetings". With an organization of this size it became a necessity. In designing for government websites, it's easy to let a good design become bogged down with mandatory banner ads, which while important, unfortunately can't be redrawn to fit one's template. Here, the Suicide Hotline and Sexual Assault Prevention links are contained in the footer, maintaining visibility but not overpowering the design.
The Adobe Experience Manager addressed NHHC's logistical challenge of leveraging its massive database of photos, artifacts, art, and documents. This layout replaces the orginal, which only had four paintings on a page. This template will populate from the AEM DAM with additional artwork as the user scrolls down.
The original Ship Histories section was comprised of roughly a hundred separate subpage directories for its 13,000 vessels. I reduces the number of clicks required to find a specific vessel using a more rational scheme and visual experience.
