National Gallery of Art
A content strategy analysis.
Project Specs
Length: 3 Months
Platform: Mostly Web
Software: Google Suite (docs, slides, sheets), Zoom
My contributions:
Aided in leading discussions
Collaborated and helped lead communication with NGA (our client)
Audited key elements of NGA (Socials, competitors, Users, general content, IAD)
Conducted key research about NGA
Contributed to the deck design
Contributed to presenting final deliverables to NGA
Executive Summary
There are three key elements that sum up National Gallery of Art’s current challenges: “connection, relevance, and engagement.” The team at the National Gallery of Art (NGA) collaborated with the Fall 2022 Content Strategy course at Pratt Institute’s School of Information to develop a content strategy that examined both the broad collection of the NGA as well as one of its marquee collections, the Index of American Design (IAD). This case study represents the culmination of the class’ work as a whole. It spans the full range of content strategy perspectives, from competitive reviews, personas, and user journeys to content channel analyses, production considerations, governance planning, mobile, content usability, and conversational interface considerations. This body of work addresses both macro strategic and organizational content issues as well as more specific tactical areas that can be applied both to the larger NGA digital presentation as well as the IAD. This case study culminates in a series of recommendations from the students that provide near-term actionable tactics to help improve the levels of connection, relevance, and engagement. These are the final deliverables to our client, the National Gallery of Art.
key success areas
The breadth of the collection is on par with other leading national and global art institutions.
NGA is in possession of a staggering amount of content and resources that can be leveraged to help advance its mission and strategic goals.
With such a rich body of primary and secondary content, even incremental changes to its organization and presentation can result in big near-term wins for the NGA and the IAD.
NGA’s social media presence represents a key channel for continued engagement across various audience segments and continues to highlight parts of the collection that reinforce NGA’s mission of greater connection, relevance, and engagement.
Key areas for opportunity
Reduce the presentation density.
Adjust the academic tone to increase engagement with non-academic audiences.
Leverage more non-textual presentation formats.
Integrate social media content into the overall digital program.
Layer the content presentation to provide hooks that allow for deeper exploration.
Provide multiple routes to content across platforms.
Elevate the IAD and use it as a fulcrum to reinforce the broader mission and goals of the NGA: connection, relevance, and engagement.
Methodology
Under the direction of Christopher Collette, a professional content strategist and assistant visiting professor at Pratt Institute in the School of Information, twelve graduate students in his content strategy course examined a wide range of content from the National Gallery of Art’s (NGA) digital presence, and in particular, its Index of American Design (IAD) from a variety of dimensions and perspectives.
Research
The class met with the NGA team on several occasions in the early part of the semester and learned about the NGA’s mission, goals, and challenges. In interactive forums we gathered information that would help us inform the work at hand.
Analysis
The class embarked on a semester-long journey and examined NGA’s content from both broad-based (institution-wide) and specific collection (IAD) perspectives.
Content strategy development + delivery
The combination of the above two segments resulted in a comprehensive content strategy statement whose purpose is to provide NGA with both strategic and tactical recommendations on how the institution can better serve its constituents and further its mission of greater connection, relevance, and engagement.
Key themes and takeaways
global
Diversify Your Audience Through Tone & Offering
Overall site tone and language doesn’t engage with different audiences beyond researchers and academics. Most text is above the 12th grade reading level*.
Fun learners, younger and older visitors, and tourists could find the text unapproachable.
Lack of entry point or dedicated space for younger audiences to experience site content.
Increase Opportunities for Cross Platform Content Sharing
Need more opportunities to easily share content bites from website to social media channels.
Overwhelmed Audiences & Decision Overload
Difficulty to scan pages due to density/ detail of content.
Mixing of content types and presentation of information in smaller chunks needed to avoid cognitive load.
Link heavy pages that disrupt user journeys may cause decision overload.
Inconsistency in Categorization & Organization
Navigation to a drop down menu is good but selection is not consistent with main page.
On some pages, the sections are not presented/categorized in the way they are in the drop-down menu.
collections
Navigation on “Recent Acquisition Highlights”
Not able to click: Not all the images lead you to the artwork information metadata page.
No way to jump to a specific piece: While this is great for the browser, if someone is trying to look for a specific piece there is no way for them to jump to that piece.
Navigating Open Access at NGA
GitHub not for the novice: This platform is difficult to figure out how to access the information.
There is no guide to help.
Artle | Not Beginner-Friendly, Only for the Art Experts
Need easier level for children or museum novices.
Advance Search Functionality
A user can search by keywords, credit line, provenance name, accession number, exhibition history, online editions, or catalogue raisonné.
Open Access at NGA
Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata: over 120,000 paintings and 53,000 high resolution images are available for free.
Artle | Unique in the Art Museum Sector
No other museum has produced a game like this.
learn
Irrelevant Content
On the Teens page, when clicking on the ‘Museum Makers Program’ and ‘Museum Assistants Program’ for more information, there is a ‘Oops.. page not found’ statement.
Inconsistency on Learn Landing Page
Each target audience category is laid out on the page differently. Teachers, NGAkids Art Zone, and Children & Families are listed vertically first. Teens, Adults, and Interns & Fellows are listed horizontally.
Categorization: The sections are not presented/categorized in the way they are in the drop-down menu.
Need Content Hierarchy
While the material on School Tour page is all significant, the way organized and presented requires attention to navigate information. Too many buttons highlighted on both sides.
Increase Opportunities for Cross Platform Content Sharing
Opportunity to enable easy ways to share content bites from website to social media channels.
Learning Resources - Content
The resources provided by NGA vary in type like lessons for teachers, interactives online, activities, and prints. It is a hub for resources to use by anyone.
visit
Inconsistent Order of the subpages in Visit Section
When hovering over the “Visit” section in the top navigation bar, the order of the subpages does not match the order as they are presented when clicking on “Visit” and are navigated to the page.
Redundant Navigation Potentially Confusing for Users
Clicking on the “Getting Here” section and the “Get Directions” button both navigate to the same page.
Overload of Text on Visitor Policies
Users are required to scroll quite a lot on this page. This page seems inconsistent other pages that make use of both text and images (like the “Accessibility” page).
Visually Engaging use of Icons
The use of icons on the visit page in the “Amenities” section is a great example of how icons are used effectively to communicate the list of amenities. This adds visual interest to the page.
Getting Here | Accessibility
Transportation: The NGA gives options of a variety of ways to search for the best transportation in the Getting There section. Embedded tools like DCCirculator facilitate visitors’ planning.
exhibitions
Give the Images Some Room and Standardization
Users encounter different image layouts: carousels, grids, or collages, which can make them feel overwhelmed.
Breadcrumb Trail Troubles
“Past” Page missing breadcrumb trail:
On "YYYY Exhibitions" page, the top breadcrumb trail does not have "Past", difficulty to return back to the "Past" landing page through trail.
Breadcrumb trails not aligned with navigation- e.g. “Home> Exhibitions> 2022> Vermeer's Secrets” highlights a “year” page not offered in the top navigation or sub-navigation menu.
CTA’s aren’t Content Managers
Collapsible control (expand with +) of text or imagery is better suited than overuse of CTA’s.
If used, have link automatically open in new tab.
Too Many Flavors of CTAs: Explore, Learn more, Read now, See more…do they mean the same thing?
More Videos Please!
Only 2 out of 6 “Current Exhibitions” have Youtube video trailers. More could pull audiences’ interest.
conservation
Lack of Consistency in Content Presentation
The length and presentation of the projects varies significantly. A few offer more pictures, smaller content chunks , more fun facts (eg. Illuminated manuscripts).
Content Display of “Resources”
Content is very diverse and not thematically grouped on the main page and in the dropdown menu there are interesting resources that are not accessible if the user doesn’t open it.
Discoverability Challenge with “Publications”
Browsing the articles is limited by year, not all of them have doi link and there’s no short description of the content available. The amount of articles on the page is overwhelming.
Need More Inclusivity with “Publications”
The content does not promote inclusion of a diverse public. It is siloed and preferences experts in the subject. Most are too long, too scientific, not an easy read.
Need Ability to Share Content Across platforms
Viewers need the ability to quickly share videos and articles from website to other platforms like social media channels
Visual and Audio Content on “Conservation Projects”
Excellent videos and audio- short up to 4 min videos showcasing the projects.
Content available for children.
Podcast link available.
Large selection of longer videos and audio content (45+min) of lectures and series is available.
Good Overview of “Resources”
Offers a concise overview of what resources and techniques are needed for conservation work.
Highlights the Gallery’s Journal:
Content is well balanced visually and textually.
Displays the most recent issue of the journal and the link to the issue offers a quick overview of its content.
The rest of the publications are organized by year and offer an exhaustive list of the published scientific research.
research
Repetition - Descriptions
Explanations for one object is shown in various places, diluting the content for what the reader might actually intended to see
Different ways of accessing same information: Categories or links live in two different places within the information structure.
Not all repetitions have the same information: Content inconsistently repeats, and are not all made equal
Large Amounts of Text
Lack of content types or other visuals makes it difficult to scan the information quickly.
Repetition - Labels
Same label appears in more than one section and in different hierarchies: Relevance of subcategories within different sections provide cognitive load issue.
Mental mapping of the content is difficult when the same category or label lives in two different levels of hierarchy.
Many layers of hierarchy
Content is only accessible by drilling in, which puts extra load on the viewer.
Formal , High Reading Grade Level & Jargon Usage
Explanations difficult to understand for non-academics due to high level reading language and jargon.
Index of american design
No Content Centrality
The content has no “home” on the site and is instead spread across various site sections.
Needs a central place where all distributed content can be viewed or filtered: The content is spread out over different categories and there is no space to see it all at a glance or navigate to other related pages.
Organized by theme : not native: First time you see Index works organized by theme/importance - should be native to the site, not through another piece of media (siloed).
Text Overload
Each of the pages associated with the IAD contain large amounts of text that are hard to read or skim.
There is minimal use of images, whitespace, and text styling.
It’s difficult to understand what the important pieces of information on a page are.
Social Media Opportunity
No social media or interactive elements: There is no advertisement for IAD anywhere within social media or the website and no elements that users can interact with.
Discoverability & Findability
Search term failure: There is no result on search tool for when user types Index of American Design. Instead, the result is a long list of 18,324 terms
User can not navigate back and forth between pages, or even back to landing page
IAD is scattered all over the website. Not cohesive or not integrated
IAD Information is buried deep in the website and is difficult to find without a direct link: Requires 3+ clicks or a direct link to reach pages that contain IAD information
Search is only helpful if you know what you’re looking for: No tags for content, object description, state of origin, artist demographics, etc.
Diversity
There seems to be little to no reflection or thought on indigenous influence on the art. (Compared to NGA AU’s prominent push to acknowledge First Nation Voices.)
Diversity that the collection exemplifies is not readily apparent.
Language & Tone
Voice behind copy is not warm or personable: The content is not fun–more personality could bring the text to life.
Tone is often academic, which does not support strategic goals of accessibility to all: High-academic vocabulary makes the content inaccessible.
Emotional connection is low due to language and tone: There needs to be more of a reason for users to want to relate and emotionally connect to the IAD.
Language is detached: The reader is often left wanting more and does not feel connected to the content, because NGA’s language is quite formal and detached.
Need for Narrative
We know “the what” and “the how”, but we don’t know “the why”: NGA tells us that their audience cares about the IAD, but there is little evidence to back this up and they don’t tell me why I should be excited or interested and why it is important to the NGA
Lack of narrative/story to bring objects to life: The collection hidden and stored narratives, but none surface in existing content
Lack connection to the program - how does it or how could it relate to contemporary time?
social Media
What’s Working Across All Socials:
Great use of high quality, saturated, and rich imagery.
Quality Content: Quality footage, editing, audio.
Language in Captions too academic. Language should be more casual, approachable, engaging, and shorter
Linktree is not efficient: There are over 400-500 links, some of which repeat diminishing the efficiency of linktree.
Confusing Story Highlights: Story Highlights are not organized well. Many of the titles are confusing and do not offer the user any information about what they might see if they click.
Youtube
Focusing on humanity: Make more videos about visitors - The Double twin interview was engaging and “of the people” - keep it coming!
Posting: The most recent saved pin in NGA’s saved pins was 9 weeks ago. The other boards have not been added to since the boards show 2-7 years since the board was last interacted with by NGA.
The use of images on NGA’s twitter is done very professionally. There is a good balance between tweets with a photo and tweets that are only text. The photos included on the museum’s twitter are of high quality and attract the attention of someone scrolling through.
What about Tik Tok?
There is no TikTok — which is unfortunate considering reels on Instagram are popular.
learn
Irrelevant Content
On the Teens page, when clicking on the ‘Museum Makers Program’ and ‘Museum Assistants Program’ for more information, there is a ‘Oops.. page not found’ statement.
Inconsistency on Learn Landing Page
Each target audience category is laid out on the page differently. Teachers, NGAkids Art Zone, and Children & Families are listed vertically first. Teens, Adults, and Interns & Fellows are listed horizontally.
Categorization: The sections are not presented/categorized in the way they are in the drop-down menu.
Need Content Hierarchy
While the material on School Tour page is all significant, the way organized and presented requires attention to navigate information. Too many buttons highlighted on both sides.
Increase Opportunities for Cross Platform Content Sharing
Opportunity to enable easy ways to share content bites from website to social media channels.
Learning Resources - Content
The resources provided by NGA vary in type like lessons for teachers, interactives online, activities, and prints. It is a hub for resources to use by anyone.
visit
Inconsistent Order of the subpages in Visit Section
When hovering over the “Visit” section in the top navigation bar, the order of the subpages does not match the order as they are presented when clicking on “Visit” and are navigated to the page.
Redundant Navigation Potentially Confusing for Users
Clicking on the “Getting Here” section and the “Get Directions” button both navigate to the same page.
Overload of Text on Visitor Policies
Users are required to scroll quite a lot on this page. This page seems inconsistent other pages that make use of both text and images (like the “Accessibility” page).
Visually Engaging use of Icons
The use of icons on the visit page in the “Amenities” section is a great example of how icons are used effectively to communicate the list of amenities. This adds visual interest to the page.
Getting Here | Accessibility
Transportation: The NGA gives options of a variety of ways to search for the best transportation in the Getting There section. Embedded tools like DCCirculator facilitate visitors’ planning.
exhibitions
Give the Images Some Room and Standardization
Users encounter different image layouts: carousels, grids, or collages, which can make them feel overwhelmed.
Breadcrumb Trail Troubles
“Past” Page missing breadcrumb trail:
On "YYYY Exhibitions" page, the top breadcrumb trail does not have "Past", difficulty to return back to the "Past" landing page through trail.
Breadcrumb trails not aligned with navigation- e.g. “Home> Exhibitions> 2022> Vermeer's Secrets” highlights a “year” page not offered in the top navigation or sub-navigation menu.
CTA’s aren’t Content Managers
Collapsible control (expand with +) of text or imagery is better suited than overuse of CTA’s.
If used, have link automatically open in new tab.
Too Many Flavors of CTAs: Explore, Learn more, Read now, See more…do they mean the same thing?
More Videos Please!
Only 2 out of 6 “Current Exhibitions” have Youtube video trailers. More could pull audiences’ interest.
conservation
Lack of Consistency in Content Presentation
The length and presentation of the projects varies significantly. A few offer more pictures, smaller content chunks , more fun facts (eg. Illuminated manuscripts).
Content Display of “Resources”
Content is very diverse and not thematically grouped on the main page and in the dropdown menu there are interesting resources that are not accessible if the user doesn’t open it.
Discoverability Challenge with “Publications”
Browsing the articles is limited by year, not all of them have doi link and there’s no short description of the content available. The amount of articles on the page is overwhelming.
Need More Inclusivity with “Publications”
The content does not promote inclusion of a diverse public. It is siloed and preferences experts in the subject. Most are too long, too scientific, not an easy read.
Need Ability to Share Content Across platforms
Viewers need the ability to quickly share videos and articles from website to other platforms like social media channels
Visual and Audio Content on “Conservation Projects”
Excellent videos and audio- short up to 4 min videos showcasing the projects.
Content available for children.
Podcast link available.
Large selection of longer videos and audio content (45+min) of lectures and series is available.
Good Overview of “Resources”
Offers a concise overview of what resources and techniques are needed for conservation work.
Highlights the Gallery’s Journal:
Content is well balanced visually and textually.
Displays the most recent issue of the journal and the link to the issue offers a quick overview of its content.
The rest of the publications are organized by year and offer an exhaustive list of the published scientific research.
research
Repetition - Descriptions
Explanations for one object is shown in various places, diluting the content for what the reader might actually intended to see
Different ways of accessing same information: Categories or links live in two different places within the information structure.
Not all repetitions have the same information: Content inconsistently repeats, and are not all made equal
Large Amounts of Text
Lack of content types or other visuals makes it difficult to scan the information quickly.
Repetition - Labels
Same label appears in more than one section and in different hierarchies: Relevance of subcategories within different sections provide cognitive load issue.
Mental mapping of the content is difficult when the same category or label lives in two different levels of hierarchy.
Many layers of hierarchy
Content is only accessible by drilling in, which puts extra load on the viewer.
Formal , High Reading Grade Level & Jargon Usage
Explanations difficult to understand for non-academics due to high level reading language and jargon.
Index of american design
No Content Centrality
The content has no “home” on the site and is instead spread across various site sections.
Needs a central place where all distributed content can be viewed or filtered: The content is spread out over different categories and there is no space to see it all at a glance or navigate to other related pages.
Organized by theme : not native: First time you see Index works organized by theme/importance - should be native to the site, not through another piece of media (siloed).
Text Overload
Each of the pages associated with the IAD contain large amounts of text that are hard to read or skim.
There is minimal use of images, whitespace, and text styling.
It’s difficult to understand what the important pieces of information on a page are.
Social Media Opportunity
No social media or interactive elements: There is no advertisement for IAD anywhere within social media or the website and no elements that users can interact with.
Discoverability & Findability
Search term failure: There is no result on search tool for when user types Index of American Design. Instead, the result is a long list of 18,324 terms
User can not navigate back and forth between pages, or even back to landing page
IAD is scattered all over the website. Not cohesive or not integrated
IAD Information is buried deep in the website and is difficult to find without a direct link: Requires 3+ clicks or a direct link to reach pages that contain IAD information
Search is only helpful if you know what you’re looking for: No tags for content, object description, state of origin, artist demographics, etc.
Diversity
There seems to be little to no reflection or thought on indigenous influence on the art. (Compared to NGA AU’s prominent push to acknowledge First Nation Voices.)
Diversity that the collection exemplifies is not readily apparent.
Language & Tone
Voice behind copy is not warm or personable: The content is not fun–more personality could bring the text to life.
Tone is often academic, which does not support strategic goals of accessibility to all: High-academic vocabulary makes the content inaccessible.
Emotional connection is low due to language and tone: There needs to be more of a reason for users to want to relate and emotionally connect to the IAD.
Language is detached: The reader is often left wanting more and does not feel connected to the content, because NGA’s language is quite formal and detached.
Need for Narrative
We know “the what” and “the how”, but we don’t know “the why”: NGA tells us that their audience cares about the IAD, but there is little evidence to back this up and they don’t tell me why I should be excited or interested and why it is important to the NGA
Lack of narrative/story to bring objects to life: The collection hidden and stored narratives, but none surface in existing content
Lack connection to the program - how does it or how could it relate to contemporary time?
social Media
What’s Working Across All Socials:
Great use of high quality, saturated, and rich imagery.
Quality Content: Quality footage, editing, audio.
Language in Captions too academic. Language should be more casual, approachable, engaging, and shorter
Linktree is not efficient: There are over 400-500 links, some of which repeat diminishing the efficiency of linktree.
Confusing Story Highlights: Story Highlights are not organized well. Many of the titles are confusing and do not offer the user any information about what they might see if they click.
Youtube
Focusing on humanity: Make more videos about visitors - The Double twin interview was engaging and “of the people” - keep it coming!
Posting: The most recent saved pin in NGA’s saved pins was 9 weeks ago. The other boards have not been added to since the boards show 2-7 years since the board was last interacted with by NGA.
The use of images on NGA’s twitter is done very professionally. There is a good balance between tweets with a photo and tweets that are only text. The photos included on the museum’s twitter are of high quality and attract the attention of someone scrolling through.
What about Tik Tok?
There is no TikTok — which is unfortunate considering reels on Instagram are popular.
User Analysis
Personas
user journeys
competitive content Assessment
As a group, we evaluated the digital content from several similar institutions, looking closely at how each approached the following:
Content organization and ease of use
Program, course, and degree offerings
Audience considerations
Supporting content: publications, resources, research studies, guides, finding aids, videos, podcasts, etc.
Social media (including blogs, microsites, and other digital properties: Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn)
Our team’s breakdown strategy to cover all of the key competitors.
Competitor Audit
Example of one section of one part of competitor audit.