Date:
May 12, 2023
Role:
Team Leader, UX Designer, Accessibility Designer
Fort Ticonderoga is a major cultural destination, museum, historic site, and center for learning. As a multi-day destination and the premier place to learn more about North America’s military heritage, Fort Ticonderoga engages more than 75,000 visitors each year with an economic impact of more than $12 million annually. Needless to say, a well-designed and accessible map is crucial for such famous site. Through constant communication with Timothy, the client, he was very satisfied with the final deliverables.
A successful museum map should be easy to understand and visually appealing. While our client came to me with their old design, which failed to do so.
The project aims to design an accessible and readable map, with both online and physical version for Fort Ticonderoga. The final delivery fulfill the purpose of capturing the essence of the architectural structure of the building and floor plans at Fort Ticonderoga to present a complete experience for visitors in-person and online.
There are two main challenges for our project. The first one is the complex structure of the architecture. Fort Ticonderoga has a sophisticated spatial design. As we are not able to visit a place in person.It makes it harder to understand the architecture in such a short amount of time.The second one is a limited online resource. There are only a few online guidance for designing museum maps or examples of successful museum map design.
By designing both 3D and 2D views for the map, our team managed to clearly indicate the use of elevators and stairs. The final design is easy to read and understand for all people, as well as comply with accessibility guidelines such as Ada and WCAG.
The client came to us with the old map for Fort Ticonderoga, and he wanted our help to develop it further.
After the first few meetings and discussions, we determined the direction of the revision:
We started research on existing museum maps to explore the different styles. Here are some examples of maps from MoMA, Copper, Hewitt and Whitney.
Considering the accuracy of the map, other than researching on design style, we also took a step back and start analyzing the complex architectural drawing of the building.
In order to fulfill our client's needs on clearly indicate use of the elevator and stairs, we decide that not only to develop the accuracy and accessibility on the 2D floor-plans, but also design a 3D version for better understanding on the use of stairs and elevator.
Stage 1
In the first stage of redesigning, we started on unifying symbols, first draft of 3D view, and more accurate layout for 2D floor-plans.
Stage 2
After making sure the layout is accurate, we started tryout different line weight.
Stage 3
After unifying the use of line weight, we sketched out every floor accordingly.
Before moving to the next step, we asked our client to provide the color platte and branding guidelines of their website.
Coloring
With the branding guidelines, we started to move forward to our final design. We create different color combination of the floor-plans, and our client choose the top-left corner one.
During the coloring process, we found that the colored version of 3D map was visually over-whelming. After discussing with the client, we all agreed on create black and white version for 3D map.
Accessibility Testing
Our first choice did not failed the accessibility color testing.
We changed the use of colors.
"Thank you for your hard work on Fort Ticonderoga's accessibility map project this semester. You were tasked with a challenging project and faced the steep hurdle of not being able to visit the space you were designing for. I have reviewed the final design you worked on and everything looks perfect. Over the course of the summer and continuing through next year we plan to publish these maps. I will be sure to keep you updated on any progress, so you can see your work being used in the real world!"
-- Timothy Mullen