Bullock Texas State History Museum
Welcoming more than 450,000 visitors a year, The Bullock Texas State History Museum features 500 ever-changing artifacts that span more than 13,000 years. It also includes the largest IMAX® Theatre in Texas, a 4D special-effects theater, a cafe, and a Museum Store.
Partnering with the Bullock Museum in 2013, Monkee-Boy worked closely with the Museum to develop a one-of-a-kind custom content management system to enable easy ongoing management of 1000’s artifacts, exhibits, stories, user-generated content types, and advanced integrations.
The website won several awards, including the 2015 MUSE Award for Best Online Experience (beating out the Smithsonian) and a 2014 TAM Wilder Award from the Texas Association of Museums.
Robust Digital Strategy
Building a new, fully responsive site with strict accessibility, government, and COPPA requirements were challenging enough. Throw in the diverse mix of audiences including teachers, students, members, and casual visitors of all ages across all of Texas, and you've got your hands full. The solution was created through Monkee-Boy's robust Diagnostic Strategy process, resulting in a 116% increase in search engine visits, a 119% increase in new visitors, and a 169% increase in returning visitors.
Fully Custom CMS
To break the mold of other museum sites, and give the Bullock unlimited freedom over the site's design and functionality, Monkee-Boy utilized the fully custom MBoy CMS. Allowing the project to explore every idea, push the boundaries of an expected museum site, and find success where others may have fallen short. The increased horsepower and flexibility resulted in not only an amazing experience but two (2) top industry awards including the highly coveted AAM MUSE Gold Award for "Best Online Presence", a Tammy from the Texas Association of Museums, and being presented at SXSW interactive.
A Site for All of Texas
Expanding the physical walls of the Bullock online required two separate tasks — presenting great content in new ways and providing new ways for Texans to join the conversation and add to the digital collection. Through new and exciting techniques including the award winning Texas Story Project, online digital photo contests, and a fully COPPA compliant Instagram curation tool, the Museum has experienced an amazing 179% increase in visits from outside the Austin Metro, 1000's of user generated content submissions, and one of the most successful digital story collection projects ever imagined.
The Artifacts of Texas
The Bullock is home to some of Texas’s most historic artifacts - some owned and some borrowed.
Monkee-Boy worked closely with the TSHM team to develop several different ways for online visitors to navigate the giant collection and experience the artifacts of Texas their way.
Additionally, Monkee-Boy developed ways to easily tie artifacts to different exhibits, stories, timelines, user-generated content, and more to build an organic exploratory experience - similar to the physical location.
All-Inclusive Calendaring System
The Bullock houses one of central Texas's widest varieties of events and programming. This includes special exhibits, a wide range of movies and documentaries, family activities, special educational programming, live music in the evenings during the summer, and more! Such a breadth of series of events required a complex, custom calendaring system that allows users on any device to see what's going on today, tomorrow and months into the future. Additionally, through seamless integration with Blackbaud's Altru system, Bullock filming staff can easily manage movie showtimes, landing pages, and ticket sales. Check out the state-of-the-art calendaring system here and go check out one of their amazing events!
Interactive Terrazzo
Use a floor mural to help users explore the rich history of Texas? No problem.
The Monkee-Boy team built a custom illustration of the Bullock's terrazzo and turned it into the new front door of its highly acclaimed Campfire Stories section. Allowing users to learn Texas history through the eyes the people who helped create its rich heritage.
As part of the experience, website users can rotate the terrazzo to view the beautiful detail, interact with the historical Texan storylines, and explore the narratives that create the story of Texas.
User Generated Content
Nobody tells the stories of Texas like Texans. Monkee-Boy helped the Bullock team plan, design, and build several unique systems to expand its collections with user-generated content. Two unique projects include the Texas Story Project and Texas Through Your Lens.
The Texas Story Project was a unique collection, curation, and display of stories provided by Texans. Once collected, the stories were displayed within a filterable, interactive map, and then the stories were cross-correlated with related Texas artifacts. Connecting the Texas stories with Texas artifacts opened another exploratory path for website visitors.
The Texas Through Your Lens project allows professional and amateur photographers to submit photographs from similar locations during unique periods. Each photo included details related to the photographer, camera type, name and description. Website visitors could then vote on their favorites during the contest window and the winning photographs became a permanent part of the museum exhibit.
Filterable Interactive Texas Timelines
There’s something fun about seeing the story of Texas in a timeline, especially when you’re a teacher or parent exploring Texas history with a child.
The State of Texas deserved a Texas-sized, feature-rich timeline, so the Monkee-Boy team went to work to build not only a timeline but one that allows visitors to combine timelines from different history archetypes together to explore Texas history through many different, unique perspectives.
The Interactive Texas Map
Monkee-Boy created one Texas-sized view to rule some of the Museum’s most interesting assets.
Through a robust integration with Google Maps, Monkee-Boy created the Interactive Texas Map which allows visitors to view where artifacts & stories were physically located around the world and filter by artifact or story, Texas region, time period, and artifact type. With the map, Texans (and wannabe Texans) could further explore the rich history.
Exploring the Texas Capitol & La Belle
One of the more interesting things learned during the initial project discovery was that there was no website for the Texas State Capitol. As such it was decided that having some content on the Bullock site to help students and visitors learn more about the State Capitol could be a great addition. As part of the project, Monkee-Boy helped build a uniquely interactive way to explore the Capitol building and learn about the Senate, House of Representatives, Goddess of Liberty, and Governor's Office like never before.
In addition, the museum's flagship exhibit (pun intended) is the La Belle—the ship that changed the course of Texas history. The La Belle was being restored during the 2014 redesign project with the long-term plan of becoming one of the central exhibits on the museum's first floor. Monkee-Boy worked closely with the Museum team to build a stand-alone microsite for La Belle to help provide educational resources to teachers and families and tell the story of its 200+ year-old journey from France to downtown Austin.
Increase in search engine visits
Increase in returning visitors
increase in visits from outside the Austin Metro