We have made some major progress since Nikki’s post last week! Not only have we figured out our toggling layer problem, we have placed the interactive map into our website! While we still have some little things to keep working on and adding to the website, our focus is now on user interaction. How do we want visitors to the site to learn about archaeology? How do we want to highlight certain aspects of archaeology? How much do we want to show on the map without it becoming cluttered?
As you can see from the screenshots below, we decided to clean up the number of points (the archaeological pit features) throughout the site. Instead of displaying every single one, which made the map very overwhelming and confusing, we decided only to display those which we chose to highlight different aspects of archaeology. The points and structures (the polygons) that we would like the user to interact with, have been made a brighter and bolder color than the surrounding elements. We also chose icons to give a preview of what the marker represents, i.e. a flower for botanical remains. When the user clicks on a marker, a small bubble of text will appear (see screenshot below), giving them a brief overview of the topic. Once we have the website on the server, we will be placing a “read more” link within each pop-up for the user to click on to bring them to a new page with the full content. This full content will also be available for users to find under the ‘Archaeology’ tab.
Mapping Morton Village: Map
Mapping Morton Village: Content Pop-up
Mapping Morton Village: Archaeology Content
We have also added a ‘Key Terms’ tab on the website, so visitors can get definitions of words being referenced.
Mapping Morton Village: Key Terms
If anyone has any comments or suggestions, we would love to have feedback!