Explore the Collection 2.0

The V&A collection contains 1.3 million objects. The collection is very broad and eclectic with objects such as Constable oil paintings to animated gifs.

The Explore the Collection page is the gateway to the collection and before the launch of the Order an Object service, it needed a refresh. We looked at several design routes, thinking about the ‘modes of our visitors, which are Discover, Ideate and Study. Discover are visitors that had never heard of the V&A before and don’t really visit museums much. Ideate are those visitors who arrive at the website with a rough idea of what they’re looking for. Study are the experts, who know exactly what they’re looking for and want every piece of information about the objects.

Explore the Collection 1.0

The first iteration of the Explore the Collection page focused on custom collections. These had been carefully curated around subjects like artist, designers, styles, movements and materials, like glass and ceramics. This worked for our Ideate and Study modes but didn’t serve Discover well enough.

Explore the Collection 2.0

We took everything from EtC 1.0 and built on it. For search we added the most searched carousel, with themes based on objects in the collection.

The Trending section focuses on content. The content team come up with a them which could be based on a holiday like Black history month, Christmas or something trending in the news. This helps keep the page fresh and give users a reason to return.

Curated collections

We kept everything from the previous version but packaged it up in a carousel, which saved on vertical space. We also created a flexible card design that can accommodate, content from a curated collection and different types of news articles, in one.