On all things digital – from our work on the web to technology in the museum.
The V&A has a strong reputation as an innovator in the conservation, display and interpretation of objects, but there are many good reasons to experiment and innovate in this...
Taking the museum out of the walls of South Kensington to those who can’t make a visit is so important for making sure that culture and our collections are accessible to...
Our first open call of the year for a nine-month videogames residency, coinciding with our upcoming exhibition Videogames:...
2017 has been an exciting year for Digital Media at the Museum. We’ve worked on some incredible products that cut across departments; we’ve worked with new software and...
On Friday after an unprecedented global consultation, we will launch as part of the ReACH conference at the V&A the new ReACH Declaration promoting the reproduction, storage...
What are the technology news from museums across Europe? How are museums using tech in a way that inspires new and existing audiences? How can digital tools help us measure what...
Last week we hosted a showcase providing an introduction to the International Image Interoperability Framework – IIIF (see more here) the opportunities it offers and how it...
What would you say is the right answer? The most important thing that drives progress when building products is… Testing once you’ve built something Silence while you’re...
What does it really mean to be agile at a museum? Do we risk shipping half-baked products if we adopt the principles of the lean startup? Can we ever be truly agile if we...
As part of our preparatory work before we start re-implementing site search on our website (and further down the line when we look at redeveloping the V&A’s Search the...
How would you categorise a museum’s collections, so that users can find what they want? ‘Average’, ‘Fair’, ‘Good’ and ‘OK’? It’s safe to say this...
This is a glimpse into the design process behind Secret Seekers, the V&A’s new game for families, starting with a three day onsite ‘Creative Sprint’ at the V&A and...
The history of the V&A and its buildings is a fascinating one, with its origins as the Museum of Manufactures in 1852, to the incredible mix of Victorian and state-of-the-art...
Earlier this year, with only two months until the new V&A Exhibition Road Quarter opened it’s doors to the public, I was given the rather urgent task of designing a...
In my experience, a product manager is everything but a specialist. You’re not the technical brain, the business expert or the user experience mastermind per se, but you’re in...
The following is the lead catalogue essay for ‘A World of Fragile Parts’, the inaugural exhibition for the Pavilion of Applied Arts at the Venice Biennale, which was...
Clothes are shorthand for being human Claire Wilcox, 2001 From the fusion of fashion with surrealist art to Vivienne Westwood’s anarchic designs – we’ve collaborated with...
The recent generous release by the Library of Congress of 25 million MARC records for open use prompted us to re-purpose an existing tool we have written for visualising and...
Jonathan Fletcher MRICS is a Technical Specialist at Plowman Craven, UK’s leading specialist chartered surveyors in 3D scanning. One of the most famous statues in the world...
Today we launched What’s On, a key product in the V&A’s digital portfolio and the latest to get a UX and brand experience overhaul following the launch of our website last...
As regular users may have noticed, there have been some small – but significant changes to the V&A’s Search the Collections (StC) website in the last few months. This...
Last week I attended the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) workshop and showcase organised to great effect by the University of Edinburgh & the National...
Practical people, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any interest in persistent identifiers, will soon find themselves the victim of broken website links. Keynes (much...
I felt something of an imposter speaking at the recent (and nattily titled) Scottish Network on Digital Cultural Resources Evaluation Symposium – #EDCR2016 – which brought...
UPDATED Post (17 Jan 2017): A slightly revised version of the top 20 searches from 2016. The initial list from before Christmas counted page views for a search, so a visitor...
It’s fitting that on its 20th anniversary, the new V&A website, vam.ac.uk, has won best website at the International Design Communication Awards 2016. The IDCA awards assess...
Over the 20+ years the V&A website has existed, there have been many different approaches taken to displaying our objects to the visitor; from the very first images on the...
Museums have been making their collections meta-data available digitally through websites & APIs for some time now (since 2009 for our Search the Collections and the V&A...
‘Better it is to get wisdom than gold’ Motto above the original entrance to the V&A As the V&A has recently launched its research institute VARI, and is...
Data is the new oil, or so they say. We are constantly generating more and more data from a dizzying array of digital interactions that we partake in every day. We are told this...
The V&A Collections API launched in 2009 with the development of the award winning Search the Collections website, now providing RESTful access to the V&A collections...
Last weekend as part of the V&A Samsung Digital Classroom, we invited in Rachel Derbyshire of ChroniclesVR to run a workshop in creating virtual reality experiences. The...
Last week we relaunched vam.ac.uk and we’ve been bowled over by the positive response – thank you. Last week I explained a bit about what we’ve done and why. Since then...
We relaunch vam.ac.uk today and we know – and hope – that there’ll be lots of questions about the new website. In the meantime, we wanted to give you an overview of what...
Tumblr. The website has, admittedly, a somewhat notorious reputation as a place where fandoms roam free and teens are constantly on patrol for the next dank meme. It is a platform...
Creating your perfect portfolio can be tough, so here are six simple tips to create one that works. Applications to university and college courses can be a daunting process...
Tom Windross 
Eva Liparova 
