Klassik Stiftung Weimar
100 years of Bauhaus. The digital cosmos of Weimar
With its unique ensemble of cultural monuments, the Klassik Stiftung Weimar is one of the largest and most important cultural institutions in Germany. Our digital strategists have realigned the "Weimar cosmos" in the digital space and completely revised the website in a comprehensive relaunch.
Exchange with guests from all over the world
The website klassik-stiftung.de is the most important information channel for visitors, tourists and a specialised audience from the fields of research, science and teaching. As a central public relations tool, it plays an ever-increasing role in communicating cultural offerings to guests from all over the world and in dialogue with museums, libraries, archives and research institutions.
The ensemble includes renowned institutions such as the Goethe National Museum with Goethe's residence, the Goethe and Schiller Archive, the Duchess Anna Amalia Library, the Bauhaus Museum and the Haus Am Horn.
Increased complexity
Kosmos Weimar is also extremely diverse in the digital space: the digital offerings range from service information, information about the facilities, exhibitions, events and the education programme to a research channel about the scientific projects, programmes and events. Various online catalogues (catalogues raisonnés, work databases, literature, essays, holdings, collections) are also an important point of contact for research purposes. The offering has grown year on year, which has diluted the structure. Before the relaunch, many users perceived the website as confusing. The various target groups were also not adequately addressed.
More than 700,000 people visit the museums of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar every year.
Workshops, paper prototyping and user stories - the cosmos is created
In workshops , we developed the target group and content concept in an agile manner with representatives from various organisational departments of the Klassik Stiftung Weimar, based on user stories, among other things. We used paper prototyping, a method from user-centred design, to design the various page types.
Mesh instead of drawers
Structural freedom - this is how you could describe the new website concept , which enables both targeted searches and the free exploration of information. In order to make the extensive range of information thematically accessible, we have linked the content using intelligent keywording. This provides users with more individualised paths on the website. In addition, further access channels to the extensive range of content are opened up via cross-entry points. In this way, we enable the foundation's topics and tasks to be portrayed in a lively and personalised way.
Technical redesign
We opted for TYPO3 as the CMS in order to optimise the KSW information cosmos on the backend side and make editorial work easier for editors. As part of the technical redesign, the integration of numerous internal and external content and pages was thought through and realised, including an event, education and publication database, a photo library for the presentation of digitised material and an online ticketing system.
The event database was designed using a special search plugin so that users can differentiate between different event types and usage scenarios. In addition to KSW events, events organised by other institutions are also recorded.
The faceted SolR search
For extensive information offerings such as the Klassik Stiftung Weimar website, an intelligent search is the be-all and end-all. That's why we have opted for the open source-based search platform SolR, which is fault-tolerant and highly scalable - which is why it is also popular for applications in the big data environment. The advantages of the faceted search: The results can be filtered according to content type (research projects, educational programmes, collections, events, exhibitions, press releases, pages). For example, exhibitions and events can be searched by topic, (event type), institution and date.
Retrieved from the archives
Paintings, sculptures, manuscripts or architectural highlights: In another project, we have teamed up with the Klassik Stiftung Weimar to make 100 epochal treasures from the archives digitally accessible at 100schaetze.klassik-stiftung.de
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