Festival of Archaeology 2013 at RAMM

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archaeology, community, Dartmoor, Festival of Archaeology, game, heritage, RAMM, web design, Your Moor Stories

Dartmoor in the museum

As part of the Festival of Archaeology we set up our Moor Stories roadshow in the courtyard at RAMM. We were alongside our colleagues from conservation who fascinated visitors with their work on finds from the Princesshay excavations. Normally conservation work in their labs but for Festival of Archaeology they set up a temporary lab in the museum.

Conservation demonstration in the Courtyard at RAMM

We had plenty of visitors look at our finds from Dartmoor, and being in the museum we were able to display some different objects to the ones we showed at Bellever Day.

looking at finds in our handling collection

Stone, bone or ceramic?

Once again visitors of all ages enjoyed the sort the finds challenge! Our curator Tom devised this simple challenge. Visitors have to sort an assortment of bones, pottery and stones into the correct categories. There were some very speedy sorters that day!

Tom’s sort out the finds challenge

Getting feedback and spreading the word

Our visitors were very happy to look at the planned designs for the Moor Stories website and give their opinions. It was an even split between pages with a map of the parishes and pages without. Look for the final design in a future post!

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Moor Stories at Bellever Day 2013

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archaeology, Bellever Day, Bronze Age, Dartmoor, heritage, history, Postbridge, Victorian, web design

Archaeology, history, heritage, crafts and stories

Bellever Day at the Postbridge Information Centre had plenty to offer visitors this year. Everything from make your own prehistoric pot to being a History Hunter!

We had a stand in the marquee and saw plenty of enthusiastic visitors over the course of the day. Lots of younger visitors enjoyed our object sorting challenge and visitors of all ages were pleased at being able to handle objects from our handling collection.

Lots of positive feedback on the new look for the website from Dartmoor National Park colleagues and visitors alike. We’re keenly anticipating seeing this in place now.

Moor Stories display at Bellever Day with Helen and Will

Good to see RAMM’s Major Partner Museum Plymouth was there too, with plenty of interest in their recent involvement in finds from Whitehorse Hill.

REACT Heritage Showcase

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community, Dartmoor, detective, digital economy, Harry Hems, Helen Burbage, heritage, Rick Lawrence, Tom Cadbury, trajectories, Victorian Medievalism, web design, Your Moor Stories

On Friday 28 September it was an early meeting at RAMM to gather kit and objects and then off to Bristol. A punctual train meant we set up our Moor Stories stand in record time.

Other exhibitors interrupted their own set up to admire the prehistoric flint tools and medieval roof bosses we had brought along.

It was good to meet colleagues from REACT and partner organisations, as well as lots of new people. The films showcasing the six funded projects were all interesting and worth watching. These are now online on the new REACT website.

Thanks to Matt and Jo and everyone at the REACT Hub for a great day and inviting us!

Up and Running

Tags

church, Dartmoor, detective, game, Harry Hems, heritage, landscape, trajectories, web design, Your Moor Stories

Well, we met the project deadline and had the website in place for 1 August!

We are pleased to see that people are using the website and got some very positive feedback from colleagues in the Dartmoor National Park Authority earlier this week.

Do try the website, add your story and have a go at Church Detective!

The Giant Chair – Moor Stories

Working up the website

Tags

Andy Chapman, Dartmoor, evaluation, map, web design, wireframes

Earlier posts have described what we are trying to achieve with the website. This week we worked with Andy Chapman from 1010Media to develop some wireframes for the website.

Wire what?

Wireframing is an essential part of the website building process. It provides the structure for the website before a design is created for the site’s finished look and feel. A wireframe gives the shape of a page showing where images, text, navigation and any other elements that users need will go. Having a series of wireframes allows developers and project team members to test ideas and check if the navigation makes sense.

Simple black and white wireframe

Building on the basics

Once a basic structure is in place we add more wireframe pages to check our ideas about how the site works are correct. This usually involves some rethinking since actually trying to work through a series of pages flushes out any problems. We also start adding visuals to the wireframes to test ideas around the look and feel of the site.

Wireframe with visuals added

Getting more complex

Our last stage is to add in wireframes for pages that will have quite a lot of interactivity in them. For this site this is the map and object information. The actual functionality is not included at this stage. This is because we want to make sure the underlying structure and navigation works before spending time on coding. It also allows us to evaluate concepts around functions within pages with the wider project team.

The result of this is a more complex wireframe where functionality is represented visually. The project team now have time to assess the wireframes and to agree or amend them at our next project meeting.

Complex wireframe showing functionality

Where’s the game?

We are working on the game too but that’s a subject for another post!