University of Oxford MARCO search design
Design and front-end build for Oxford University's major manuscript and archive search tool
MARCO – Manuscripts & Archives at Oxford University – is a major search tool, created by Bodleian Libraries with backing by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It draws together over 250,000 searchable items from eleven catalogues held across the University of Oxford.
The project team asked me to develop a pragmatic, clear design for the tool, emphasising ease of use, to provide access to the huge selection of resources for users with a wide variety of technical knowledge and expertise. After creating representative mockups in Figma, which were refined and developed with input from the team, I moved on to build a full prototype of the website's key pages and interfaces in HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Accessibility and usability were at the forefront of the aims for the project, backed by a refined, flexible design system – and so the creation of these prototypes allowed for real-world testing and iteration of interfaces and UI elements that were ultimately used 'as is' within the final tool.
The tool was initially launched in late 2023, and has since benefited from rounds of user testing. My involvement in dealing with this testing resulted in several rounds of updates to the design and its implementation, to ensure it satisfied user needs and technical requirements.
The information accessible with MARCO is hugely complex, inter-related and flexible in its nature, and the designs created for this system are consistent and rich enough to allow the project team to develop new pages and interfaces that are absolutely in-keeping with the overall 'look and feel'.