In-depth Evaluation of MCA Website: Responsive Web Design Principles

This report presents a comprehensive evaluation of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) website, focusing on its responsive web design (RWD) principles. The evaluation includes an analysis of the website's features, navigation, and content presentation across different devices, specifically laptops, iPads, and smartphones, using the Google Chrome device simulator. The report incorporates a heuristic evaluation, drawing insights from user interviews to assess usability and identify areas for improvement. The positive aspects of the website, such as its informative content and accessibility, are highlighted, along with negative aspects like the navigation bar's interference, lack of a consistent logo, and formatting issues. Recommendations are provided to enhance the website's user experience, including content censoring, clearer navigation, and improved formatting for better visual appeal and accessibility. The report concludes with a review of the website's display on various devices, emphasizing the importance of RWD for optimal user experience. This assessment was done as part of the COIT20268 Responsive Web Design module.

Running head: WEBSITE EVALUATION
WEBSITE EVALUATION
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

1WEBSITE EVALUATION
Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................2
Responsive Web Design:.............................................................................................................3
Features of the website:...................................................................................................................3
Heuristic evaluation of the website:................................................................................................5
Positive and negative aspect of the website:....................................................................................7
Positive aspects of the website:...................................................................................................8
Negative aspect of the website:...................................................................................................8
Recommendations for improvement:..............................................................................................9
Website review for the display in different devices:.....................................................................11
Advantages and disadvantages of Google simulator:....................................................................16
Conclusion:....................................................................................................................................16
Reference:......................................................................................................................................18

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Introduction:
Museum of Contemporary Art or MCA currently located at Sydney, Australia. The
museum is known well for the contemporary art exhibition (Thwaites, 2018). Contemporary art
is the art of the modern time or the art created in the latter half of the 20th century or the 21st
century. The museum is dedicated in exhibiting, interpreting and collecting the work of the
artists of today’s generation. This museum is about survey exhibition of the practice of the
artists. This museum hosts many exhibitions. Admission fees for this museum is free of cost and
the timings are from 10 am to 5 pm daily except Wednesdays. On Wednesday, the timing of the
museum is from 10 am to 9 pm. Visits to the museum can be planned in advance by the visitors.
MCA works in connecting disabled people and accessing requirements along with contemporary
art (Ertug, Yogev, Lee. and Hedstrom, 2016). This museum offers free access for reducing
barriers for all the events and programs hosted by the museum. The current exhibition shows of
the museum are Michael Armitage, The lover circles his own heart, Destiny Deacon and MCA
Collection. The upcoming event of Shaun Gladwell: Pacific Undertow at the museum will be the
biggest survey exhibition representing the work of Shaun Gladwell, an Australian artist who is
best known due to his videos which represents body in motion. The MCA museum also have a
rooftop cafe from where best views of Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Opera House are
available. The cafe have several types of dishes available starting from snacks to main and side
dishes to desserts. There are also variety of foods available for kids as well. MCA store is also
available where various items are sold. The museum also provide contemporary and stylish
backdrops for variety in events like weddings, cocktail functions, special occasions and product
launches (Lorente, 2016). MCA is a not-for-profit, independent organization, increasing the
revenue over 75% from sources of non-government (Fitzgerald, 2019).

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Responsive Web Design:
This is a process of viewing a specific website or applications on different devices. The
user satisfaction is ensured only after the website is suitable for usage in different types of
devices having different resolutions. Here, for reviewing, laptop, iPad, iPhone x and an android
smart phone view is chosen for viewing the MCA website (Tan, 2018).
Features of the website:
The website is laden with some of the features like navigation bar consisting of
‘WHAT’S ON’ and the ‘MENU’ options.
The WHAT’S ON button shows the events occurring at the museum. It consists of three
options. Each of them have a list of drop down arrow, which upon clicking reveals the relevant
list of information. They are shown below:
 Show everything
 Exhibitions
 Tours
 Talks
 Workshops
 Performance films
 on the next seven days
 today
 tomorrow
 the next 30 days
 all dates

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 for everyone
 school holidays
 kids & families
 adults
 young people
 members
 Teachers and educators.
Apart from these, the website is informative and contains a lot of information about the art that
are put up for the exhibition. The website depicts modern art as the museum displays all the
modern art.
Curatorial essays and interviews are given in a part of the website which describes stories
and ideas provided by the people (Hansen, Henningsen, and Gregersen, 2019). The events are
displayed on the home page. Several pre-recorded interviews of personalities or the artists are
available on the website.
A section of the website is reserved for the spotlight talks. Here, various people who are
passionate about modern art shares their thoughts about what had moved them amongst the
exhibited materials. These are usually short session lasting for 10 minutes or lesser.
The website shows the details of the exhibition, that is date, and venue or unit number.
At the end of the website, the contact details of the website along with the hour of activity
is given for the users’ convenience. The subscription to the museum along with the social media
through which the website can be visited.

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Heuristic evaluation of the website:
Heuristic evaluation is performed by the evaluators of the website to examine the user
interface of the website and judge the compliance of the website for better usability (Hearst,
Laskowski, and Silva, 2016).
Here, two interviews has been conducted for documentation of the website usability (Leach,
2016):
INTERVIEW-I
Name of the Interviewee: Robert Wood
Age: 24 Place: Melbourne Occupation: Engineer
Questions: Answers:
Have you been through the
new MCA website?
☒ yes
☐ no
What device do you use while
browsing the website?
☐android ☒ iPhone ☒iPad
☐laptops or desktop
What was your experience? “The website was pretty informative. There were
ample of information regarding the different exhibited
items. I got to see the photographs and interviews of
few artist. Over all it was good.”
What difficulties did you face? Cannot understand the navigation bar functionalities.
The search bar is not present. The search option opens
a new tab. The navigation bar keeps on appearing on
the screen interfering the videos. It is extremely

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disturbing.
What can be done for
improvement?
The navigation bar should be fixed. And the
functionalities must be made clearer.
Recommendation The website felt crowded with information. The
information are not arranges properly. Little more
format adjustment is needed.
How similar it is to any other
such website?
It is somewhat similar to another website. Though that
was better. This website needs some work.
INTERVIEW-II
Name of the Interviewee: Isabella Knightly
Age: 21 Place: Gold Coast Occupation: Painter
Questions: Answers:
Have you been through the
new MCA website?
☒ yes
☐ no
What device do you use while
browsing the website?
☒android ☐ iPhone ☐iPad
☒laptops or desktop
What was your experience? “The experience was somewhat good. The first thing
that popped up when I started browsing the website
was a headless doll. That was very disturbing. May be
it was a mockery regarding something else, but it
should have censored before upload. Otherwise the
website was pretty interesting. It has a good stock of

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modern art that is worth paying a visit to in the real
museum.”
What difficulties did you face? Difficulty in browsing. Could not understand the
operations of the What’s On option.
What can be done for
improvement?
The functionalities must be made clear.
Recommendation The content censoring is important. The website is
available to all hence, checking upon what is being
uploaded is important.
How similar it is to any other
such website?
Nope. It is unique in its’ very own way.
From the interviews conducted it is clear that the people are well aware of the website and are
interested in using it. But there are certain things present in the websites which bothers them and
that has be taken care off. On the basis of that, few conclusions can be drawn (Cruickshank,
2018). The positive and the negative aspect of the website are determined and are given
explained in the following section (Hermawati and Lawson, 2016).
Positive and negative aspect of the website:
A website is developed on the basis of the users’ demand. Hence, it is necessary for the
developers to create a website which is suitable for all types of users. Thus after detailed
evaluation some of the positive and negative aspects of the website has been brought to the
notice, they are stated below (Rossi, Lipsey,and Henry, 2018).

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Positive aspects of the website:
One of the most important aspect of this website is that, it has made the MCA known to
the people outside the country. This is important as it helps in enhancing the growth of the
The website is very informative. It depicts each and every information about the
exhibition or any approaching event.
The individual picture or link open up to provide more information about the events or
the art that are there.
Audio guide is also available for some of the event description.
Negative aspect of the website:
The web site does not have a proper logo for the MCA. In broader display like the laptops
and iPad the full name of the museum is displayed, that is, Museum of Contemporary Art. This is
not the scenario for the smaller displays. In the reduced screen size, the logo changes to MCA. A
logo should remain intact no matter what is the size of the display.
The navigation bar is the first thing to describe when a website is evaluated. The
navigation bar is not in alignment with the museum logo. Moreover, the navigation bar appears
on the content while browsing the website. This causes disturbance while viewing the contents
(Ivanova, Lambrix, and Åberg, 2015).
It is good for a website to be informative, but overloading the website with information
making unattractive and difficult to handle.

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There are certain content in the website which are sensitive to look at. These have a
negative impact on the website. Though it is a 21st century modern art museum website, sensitive
subjects must be censored before posting them on the website.
The website has division of the contents for different people under different age group
but that is not clear. When the page is opened, child contents are rarely found.
There are certain formatting issues with the website as well. The websites generally have
same sized displayed photographs when they are beside one another. The display pictures are not
aligned properly.
The colour contrast is not suitable for visually impaired people. Especially the picture
with high content of colors and contrast.
Recommendations for improvement:
The above mentioned negative points have to be fixed in order to make a website look
better and soothing to the eyes of the viewer. The museum logo on the website should be clear
and should remain unchanged no matter what the display size is. The contents are recommended
to be revised before posting them on the website (Preston, 2018). For example, there is a picture
of a beheaded doll that is present on the home page of the MCA website, under exhibition named
as Destini Deacon. These are the content that should be censored no matter what it is. The
website is for everyone hence, these disturbing images cause more harm than good to the users
accessing the website. As the website is universal, under age viewing of the website should be
kept in mind while developing the website any further.

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The information regarding the location of the museum in Australia (Rickard, 2017) can
be just provided at the end of the page. There are places where the address of the museum is
given in bigger fonts. In those cases, while developing the website, they should be removed.
The websites should be informative, but all the information present in the home page are
not beneficial for the website. The categories of the website or the availability of options on the
website must be written on the navigation bar clearly. This is to ensure that the contents are
intact and the users can use the website comfortably.

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Website review for the display in different devices:
Figure 1: The full desktop view MCA
1. The MCA website in the full desktop view. This is how the website looks like in the full
view (Pinheiro and Collobert, 2015).
The dimension of the website view is 1280*800 pixels (figure 1)
The full view of the website can be seen here.