Our fascination with the sea goes back to time immemorial, and for Australians, our connection with water is ever-present. At Pollen, we were ‘over the seas’ excited to work with the Australian National Maritime Museum to design its new website. The new website was an opportunity to create a unique and compelling online experience for Museum audiences, wherever they may be, while driving a strong and consistent connection to the physical place, and spaces, of the museum itself.

The Australian National Maritime Museum is located on the Sydney Harbour foreshore, on the bamal (earth) and badu (waters) of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation. The physical museum includes gallery experiences of maritime history, archaeology and immigration, and a spectacular fleet of ships on which visitors can explore, and even set sail.

The museum’s primary goals for its new website were twofold: to streamline transactional pathways, referred to as the ‘fast food’, and to create a more engaging, immersive experience for exploring its diverse themes through storytelling and rich media — the ‘slow food’. Our task was to simplify navigation and improve the organisation of information, making it easier for visitors to find what they need and take action.

To achieve this, we designed a new search engine for more relevant content discovery and ensured the website aligned with the museum’s commitment to accessibility and inclusivity. This involved meeting web standards and addressing the needs of various communities, including First Nations peoples, educators, and those unable to easily access the physical museum.

During the Discovery phase, we collaborated closely with teams from across the museum to identify challenges, opportunities, and goals for the new website. We held ideation sessions, co-designed page models, and worked together to define a new taxonomy for the site. 

In the Design phase, Pollen's UX research team conducted user testing on the proposed designs, focusing on key transactional journeys like purchasing tickets and exploring events, particularly on mobile. We also tested navigation, the homepage, and wayfinding for usability, clarity of calls-to-action, and overall user experience. These insights were used to further refine the designs.

The new user interface is designed with intuitive way-finding, utilising colour and iconography to create clear, purposeful navigation paths. Drawing from the museum’s brand pillars — Immersive, Surprise, Authentic, and Personal — we’ve crafted a user experience that balances playfulness with sophistication.

The redesign focuses on streamlining key journeys, such as ticket purchases and donations, to boost conversions while also encouraging deeper engagement with other areas like the Collection, Learning Hub, and the Museum’s fleet of vessels.

Inspired by rising tides, the motion, and interactions feature smooth, bottom-up animations that create a fluid sense of pace, enhancing the dynamic user experience.

An important consideration for this project was how to showcase and encourage deeper exploration across the website of the museum’s content pillars — Maritime Archaeology, Fleet, Migration, First Nations, and Ocean Futures. These pillars offer new ways for audiences to understand and engage with the Australian National Maritime Museum’s mission and deep subject expertise. This thinking guided our user experience design, focusing on supporting structured content and prominently featuring tags and filters to aid navigation and surface relevant content.

As part of our design work, Pollen created a design system that provides the museum with a suite of components. Components have multiple variations for use in different website contexts, and they are all highly accessible and responsive.

Once we completed designs, the Pollen engineering team supported museum developers by delivering front-end code for use in Storybook, with designers and developers working together to enhance interactions. The design system has created consistency, scalability and streamlined development. It will also elevate the user experience by ensuring cohesive visuals and intuitive navigation for the new museum website.

The new website marks the beginning of an exciting journey for the Australian National Maritime Museum. Working closely with all the museum teams, we’ve delivered an enhanced user experience, a strong digital brand presence, and a versatile, scalable set of design assets that the museum can use in the future. As the museum continues to grow and expand its content, it will engage audiences locally, nationally, and globally with its distinctive, rich and uniquely Australian maritime offerings.