A Royal Redesign
Posted by Andrew Wayman on February 14th, 2009
With the help of World Wide Web inventor, Tim Berners-Lee, Queen Elizabeth II of England has redesigned the official Website of the British Monarchy. Initially launched in 1997, the revamped Website, royal.gov.uk, was launched ceremoniously at a Palace reception where the 82 year old Queen stood before a bank of nine screens and clicked a remote control to relaunch the royal site.
New royal website
The site is managed by staffers at the palace and took months to redesign and involved determining from people what drew them to the site and kept them there, according to the BBC. The Queen, much like President Obama, has been on the cutting-edge of technology for some time. In 2006, she reportedly had her Christmas message podcasted and in 2007, she launched a Royal Channel on YouTube.
The new site is vastly different from the previous iteration which was very structured and formal. The new site is very Web 2.0-esque featuring multimedia, rich media, and new media. There are lots of photos, streaming videos widgets, RSS feeds, social bookmarking, mashups (Google Maps), lots of dynamic features like slideshows, image galleries, video galleries, and even a history of the pages you visited on the site. It has an almost blog-like appearance and informality. The design and layout is very open, the color palette very light, and the feel of being almost user-generated. There are all smiling, happy photos. It is very approachable, friendly, fun, and seemingly happening.
There are rumors of a royal blog by a family member other than the Queen but no royal word yet on any social networking or twittering anytime soon.
-Andrew Wayman
Tags: Andrew Wayman, british monarchy, galleries, google maps, image galleries, obama, Palace blog, President Obama, queen elizabeth, Redesign World, Royal Channel, royal gov, RSS, social networking, tim berners lee, video, widgets, YouTube
