Loading ...Moving at the Speed of Light: Upgrading NASA.gov from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0
We were recently approached by NASA to rethink the overall NASA.gov experience. 
NASA had been losing relevance with the 18-24 year olds in the past few years. Understanding that this younger audience is more sophisticated and comfortable with web 2.0 and social networks, this allowed us to draw on these key insights to deliver a new and innovative experience that attracts and appeals to a younger and broader audience while keeping their existing core.
Although web 2.0 features are very seldom seen in government agency websites, NASA-as its innovative nature predicts-has taken a leap far ahead of other such government groups. With the launch of a website suited for a younger audience, NASA is paving its path for future generations.
This new redesign, named NASA 5.0, brings about a richer experience resembling space exploration and discovery. It takes full advantage of showing off all the rich content, imagery, video, etc. The site also incorporates web 2.0 features such as blogs, social commenting on articles, content syndication, social bookmarking, and much more, to better connect with the younger audience.
It was truly a challenging experience; in less than 4 months together with NASA and our technical partner, eTouch Systems, we brought this new experience to life on a very heavily trafficked site.
Below are some of the highlights from this latest redesign:
The tag cloud displays popular content that people are searching for throughout the site, and provides an interesting method of browsing NASA.gov. For those interested , eTouch Systems used Baynote’s technology to generate the terms.
Topic Filters
Topic filters are used throughout the site to help users filter by relevant categories to locate items of interest. Below we show the filter being used in the education section to find material for educators.
NASA’s image of the day is one of the most popular features on their site. The image gallery empowers users to explore through the rich imagery much like desktop photo browsing software.
MyNASA
Although still at its infancy, MyNASA’s easy interface allows users to customize content and widgets appearing throughout the site. It’s also where users can locate bookmarks that they may have saved of different pages.
Content Syndication
Throughout the site you’ll find that the content is syndicated as RSS. Rich overlays assist the user in adding the feed to their favorite RSS reader.
Social Bookmarking
Social bookmarking is on almost all pages and it promotes users to announce pages of interest to various social networks, including MyNASA .
Bravo!
I love it, and use it as an example of the great sides with “Web 2.0″.
Jonas
Although the NASA website looks flashy and glossy and all “web2.0-y” until NASA “opens up” this will be nothing more than just another site claiming to be web2.0. Commenting systems, and tag clouds, are all nice, but what would really be great is if NASA went with an open-source type content management system and made an effort to integrate all 10,000 individual NASA websites that exist into one searchable website. I envision scientists with brilliant ideas, quickly uploading and sharing this information via the website. Then others can come along and tag it as useful and build on it. This site still does not facilitate knowledge transfer, openness, transparency, and communication. All that being said, at least you guys made it look more spacy!
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