Simon's in New York as he writes this... which is relevant.
We've spent a lot of time this year talking to large UK-based arts venues, perhaps most significantly the Barbican and The Royal Opera House... very fine people all.
Anyway, as a result, we've done a lot of thinking about what makes an arts venue's website really work, and always trying to avoid being seduced by aesthetics and instead worrying about functionality. (Our challenge to arts bodies has always been: is your website as easy to use as the Mean Fiddler's?)
Now then, I think it's traditional for we Brits to have a slight inferiority complex when it comes to some media stuff. Yes, yes, we 're bizarrely arrogant when it comes to TV (go figure). But we can feel a bit under-par compared to the US when it comes to a discipline like web design. And often fairly.
But Simon has to report that in trying to get along to the Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater to catch a rare screening of Michael Snow's 1968 minimalist classic Wavelength, he had to use their website, which, it must be said, is a fright.
Yes, they've got the problem facing dozens of large arts organisations: a plethora of venues, programmes and sub-organisations, but really, this site is an object lesson in non-User-Centred Design: non-standards compliant, all-over the place in Firfefox on the Mac (hardly a minority platform) and shockingly bad IA. Simon reports that just finding an address for the cinema was an uphill task.
So there you go. We hope that the current significant physical renovation of the venue(s) is accompanied by an uplift in their web presence.
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