Western Australian Museum - Information, Features, And Overview

 Clearly identify the nominated website. Provide an overview and description of the nominated website.
(2) Identify and elaborate the main feature or features of the website.
(3) Identify the positive and negative aspects of the website. Draw particular attention to the interaction and usability aspects of the interface.
(4) Invite two other persons to review the nominated website. These participants can be your friends, family members or classmates etc. Include their comments in the report. Provide the background (i.e. age, gender, profession) of the participants. You do not need to include the participants’ names in the report. Do their views differ from yours’? State why or why not.

(5) Based upon your critique and observation in items (1) to (4) of the above, provide a recommendation on how the website should be improved. Conversely, if it does not require further improvement, then provide the reason why that this is the case.
(6) Except for item (4) of the above, all assertions relating to HCI design principles (e.g. statements like ‘blue text on red background is a poor colour combination’ ) must be supported by references or critical observation. You can cite additional scholarly references other than the textbook.

Overview of the website

The Western Australian Museum created this website with the purpose of serving the viewers with relevant information about the museum. As the website apparently suggests, the Western Australia Museum was established in the year 1891 in Perth. From then The Western Australian Museum is carrying on with its legacy of antique specimens. The official website of this particular museum suggests that it is a chain of museums that are spread all over the world or are about to be made. The website has enabled the authority to attract tourists not only within the country but also from all over the world.

The museum is one of the state’s asset as suggested by the website. Besides serving the purposes with relevance to the museum, the website also provides the surfers with external links that are directed to other social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter Instagram and Newsletter (Western Australian Museum 2018). The purpose of this report is to clearly identify the key features of this website and critically evaluate them according to the perceived understandings relying on the basic framework of human computer interaction protocols.

Discussion

            This section deals with the overview of the website, elaboration of the key features, discussion of the major aspects and opinions from outside sources.

Overview of the website

            As it appears, the nominated website is the Western Australian Museum website from the region of Western Australia. The uniform resource locator suggests that it is a government website hosted by the Western Australian Museum authority (Bennett 2013). It is a virtual platform for the real world chain of museums. The website reflects that the chain of Western Australian Museum was formed in the year 1806 in Perth and since then it has spread out all across Western Australia. As it is a government website, the domain ends with gov.au. This website is designed with a notable black stripe design along with contrasting texts for better visibility. It is composed of several tabs among which some of them are the drop down tabs for viewing the insights of the detailed website.

Apparently, the website seems to be stuffed with enough information and aims to provide a soothing personal experience to all the visitors of the website. The maintenance team seems to have put extra effort into structuring the style and content of the website (Mustafa 2014). With accordance to the logo, the website supports the Australian culture. Special campaigns hosted by the Western Australian Museum authority are depicted in a slide chain in the website. Among them, the horrible histories and the Aboriginal referendum are the notable slide sections of the website.

The website is composed of several web pages with relevant information about the various sections of the Western Australian Museum (VanWee, Geurs and Chorus 2013). The left top corner is composed of the logos from the government of Western Australia along with the logo of the Western Australian Museum. The Site map, the Accessibility, and the Contact Us section form the top right corner of the website. Just under those sections is provided with the search space area for providing the visitors with a customized search experience.

Elaboration of the features

Elaboration of the features

            As discussed in the overview section of the report this government website appears to be one of the prestigious websites of the government of Western Australia. The Site map section present in the right top corner provide the visitors with an overview in each of the inside sections. Each heading is linked with one another under this section for maintaining fluency in the viewer experience. The Accessibility section on the other hand gives the clear idea of the information regarding the Western Australian Museum and also gives a brief idea about the website’s physical access, accessibility of the website along with the disability inclusion plans.

The Accessible Web Design section included in the Accessibility section provides a declaration stating that the website has been successful in following the web content accessibility guidelines (Ahmad and Khan 2017). The innovative approach of this website allows it to be accessible to people with disabilities, people with comparatively slower internet connections and the people in rural areas. The Contact us section of the website provides the viewers with contacts for general enquiries, branch phone numbers, specific divisions of the museum and the curatorial contact list.

The search section just below the three sections on the website is meant to serve the purpose of the customized search experience. The designed website is supported by illustrations and critical explanations especially in the accessibility section (Johnson 2013).

The nine tabs in the blacked heading are composed of several subtopics under which lies all the relevant information (Subi?, Kruni? and Gemovi? 2014). The coding of this dedicated website appears to be performed with the help of Personal Home Page (PHP) language, which is an amalgamation of the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) along with the JavaScript.  This language is extensively used in website development. The data appears to be implemented with the help of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) language that is generally used for describing an online presentation.

Major aspects of the website

            The website covers up both of the positive and negative aspects. The positive aspects are more in number as compared with the negative aspects of the website. The Western Australian Museum website has a very rejuvenating appearance since it is composed of contrasting colours and designs. The interface appears to be user friendly and thus maintains all the protocols of the Human Computer Interface (HCI). As per the HCI guidelines, the website has been kept simple, accessible and useful for a general viewing experience (Lazar, Feng and Hochheiser 2017). No hyperlinked sources used in the website is kept dangling or it is redirected to another website hosted by a different domain.

This is definitely a positive aspect of the website since it doesn’t involve any complex traffic structures that may lead up to a congestion of the online traffic hindering the user experience. Too much traffic is a setback for the users with a relatively slow internet connection. The website adheres to the conceptual, empirical and technical web design guidelines thus helping to reach out to the people with disability issues (Waddell, Zhang and Sundar 2015). Clinging on to the same positive side the website, the interface is simple for which the people residing in the rural sectors of the country could easily access it in accordance with their requirement.

Major aspects of the website

            There are minimal negative aspects of the website when compared to the positive aspects, as the percentage is very less. However, one of the significant negative aspects of the Western Australian Museum website is that the security of the serving site is not well maintained. This governmental website, which is a digital platform for the Western Australian Museum, lacks security in its Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) (Husák et al. 2015). Lack of security of the website may unintentionally invite the prying eyes of hackers and may also lead up to a data breach. Prestigious information could easily be transferred from the website to other sources that may disrupt the privacy of the website. A worst case scenario may include a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack for which the retrieval of sensitive data becomes impossible leading to permanent termination of the website (Frantz et al. 2014).

Opinions of outside sources

            The two outside sources that are invited for reviewing the nominated website of Western Australian Museum is titled as Source 1 and Source 2 with respect to the context. Both Source 1 and Source 2 are male students. Source 1 is a student reading in school while Source 2 is a college goer. Source 1 and Source 2 are a minor and an adult respectively.

According to Source 1, the website of the Western Australian Museum is a thoroughly well maintained website that consists of all the relevant information about the Western Australian Museum. The colour combination of the website is fine as well as it serves the purpose of any visitor reaching out for then website considering all his needs about the chain of museums in Western Australia. According to him, there are no issues as such.

According to Source 2, the website of the Western Australian Museum is definitely a well maintained website maintaining all the HCI guidelines. However, he considers the facts that are some of the faults relating to the hosting of the nominated website (Lazar, Feng and Hochheiser, 2017). According to him, the uniform resource locator of the website lacks security and that may pose a threat in the further development of the website.

It is evident from the above opinions that both the sources has contributed to the report according to their own perspectives. Both the opinions match directly or indirectly to the evaluations drawn in the above sections (Basson, Kanevsky and Oblinger 2015). Since Source 1 is still a minor and reading in school, he could not figure out the security issues of the website. However, being a college goer it was not tough for Source 2 to figure out the security issues in hosting the website.

Recommendation

            As discussed in the above sections the website appears to be packed with information about the Western Australian Museum and is a significant source of digital advertisement. More number of people can get involved in receiving the new updates. From a viewer’s perspective the website is well designed and well maintained (Billingham 2014). The only negative aspect of the nominated website is that it lacks security maintenance. The website is not protected since a secured Hyper Text Transfer Protocol is not used. The lack of security of the website may increase the number of data breaches and phishing issues.

To ensure the safety of this website, the government could take strict measures to counter the problem of loose security issues. In addition to that, several other measures could be taken for the development of the website by increasing the number of website cookies for better user experience. Campaigns that are launched with the help of social networking sites could advertise more on other media to reach out to more number of people. This will enable the website to outsource more employees to other parts of the country.

Conclusion

            From the above report, it can be concluded that the website of the Western Australian Museum is a website that serves the digital purpose of the physical locations of the Western Australian Museum. This government website of Western Australia is meant to serve the people with relative information and news about the website. The website is a well maintained and well designed website that is meant to serve every visitor visiting the website.

It follows all the protocols of the Human Computer Interaction where the information provided is conceptual, empirical and theoretical. The website has taken special initiative to keep the website simple and useful. People paying a visit to the website could easily access it according to their desire. The security issues of the website of the Western Australian Museum is what the government of Western Australia should look for ensuring the safety of people paying a visit to the website in search of information.

References

Western Australian Museum. 2018. Museums | Western Australian Museum. 

Bennett, T., 2013. The birth of the museum: History, theory, politics. Routledge.

Lazar, J., Feng, J.H. and Hochheiser, H., 2017. Research methods in human-computer interaction. Morgan Kaufmann.

Waddell, T.F., Zhang, B. and Sundar, S.S., 2015. Human–Computer Interaction. The International Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Communication, pp.1-9.

Husák, M., Cermák, M., Jirsík, T. and Celeda, P., 2015, August. Network-based HTTPS client identification using SSL/TLS fingerprinting. In Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES), 2015 10th International Conference on (pp. 389-396). IEEE.

Frantz, M., Wittenstein, A., Eynon, M., Mather, L., Lloyd, J., Schumacher, J. and Murphy, D., EMC Corp, 2014. System and method for network security including detection of attacks through partner websites. U.S. Patent 8,756,684.

Basson, S.H., Kanevsky, D. and Oblinger, D.A., International Business Machines Corp, 2015. Predictive user modeling in user interface design. U.S. Patent 9,165,280.

Ahmad, A. and Khan, M.N., 2017. Developing a website service quality scale: a confirmatory factor analytic approach. Journal of Internet Commerce, 16(1), pp.104-126.

Lazar, J., Feng, J.H. and Hochheiser, H., 2017. Research methods in human-computer interaction. Morgan Kaufmann.

Billingham, L., 2014. Improving academic library website accessibility for people with disabilities. Library Management, 35(8/9), pp.565-581.

Mustafa, S., 2014. Is an Accessible Website a More Usable One?. Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Research Showcase@ CMU.

Johnson, J., 2013. Designing with the mind in mind: simple guide to understanding user interface design guidelines. Elsevier.

Subi?, N., Kruni?, T. and Gemovi?, B., 2014. Responsive web design–Are we ready for the newage. Journal of Applied Knowledge Management, 2(1).

VanWee, B., Geurs, K. and Chorus, C., 2013. Information, communication, travel behavior and accessibility. Journal of Transport and Land Use, 6(3), pp.1-16.