Heritage and Education Cluster at Centro de Patrimonio UC
Website development for the UC Heritage and Education Cluster
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In late 2022, the Heritage and Education Cluster at Centro de Patrimonio UC needed a digital platform that could make research, heritage education, and historical memory content more visible through interactive experiences. Led by academic and researcher Cecilia Ramírez, the project aimed to support civic education through digital heritage routes for students, teachers, and the general public.
- 3digital heritage routes
The challenge
The main challenge was to turn academic and heritage content into clear, accessible, and easy-to-explore digital journeys.
The project included three main routes:
- Barrio Huemul Route
- The Normal School Women Route
- A+S Memory Site Route
Each route was designed to support the exploration of historical landmarks, educational content, and heritage resources through a more visual, structured, and interactive web experience.
What we did
Stage 1: Barrio Huemul Route
The first stage created a virtual heritage journey through Barrio Huemul, a protected historic district in southern Santiago, Chile.
The goal was to let visitors explore the heritage area through a simple, educational, and visual digital experience. We developed two complementary navigation formats:
- An interactive satellite map with points of interest.
- A blog-style editorial structure for browsing the content.
Each heritage landmark also received its own internal page, supported by a side navigation panel with relevant links for continuing through the route.
Stage 2: The Normal School Women Route
In the second stage, the experience created for Barrio Huemul was adapted to a new heritage route focused on Chilean women trained in normal schools. The route highlights educational heritage and their history through the lenses of gender, memory, and civic education.
The aim was to preserve a consistent user experience while adapting it to a new educational and heritage narrative. The work made it possible to:
- Reuse a previously validated navigation structure.
- Organize new historical and educational content.
- Improve access to information about heritage, gender, and memory.
- Maintain visual consistency across the project's routes.
Stage 3: A+S Memory Site Route
The third stage developed the A+S Memory Site Route, focused on bringing visibility to people whose stories were suppressed or silenced in contexts of human rights violations. The challenge was to create a respectful, clear, and sensitive digital experience for complex historical content.
The route contributes to:
- Passing memory between generations.
- Protecting heritage connected to sites of memory.
- Making silenced stories and territories visible.
- Understanding historical processes through an educational lens.
Main web components
To turn research content into an interactive digital experience, the site included components designed to improve navigation, territorial exploration, and access to heritage information. It needed to work not only as an informational website, but as an educational platform for digital heritage routes.
The main components were:
- Interactive satellite map.
- Information pop-ups.
- Floating navigation menu.
- Internal pages for each heritage landmark.
- Blog-style editorial navigation.
Interactive satellite map
The satellite map locates every landmark in its geographic context. Each point opens the full information for that location and helps visitors understand its place within the wider route.
Its main benefits are:
- Locating landmarks in their territorial context.
- Supporting more visual navigation.
- Connecting historical content with geography.
- Improving understanding of the route as a whole.
Information pop-ups
Pop-ups provide supplementary information about historical landmarks without forcing visitors to leave the current page. They support deeper exploration without interrupting the journey.
Their implementation makes it possible to:
- Deliver additional information quickly.
- Keep visitors within the route.
- Avoid unnecessary page loads.
- Improve the continuity of the digital experience.
Floating navigation menu
A floating desktop menu was added to the internal landmark pages to improve usability. It helps visitors move through the content, access relevant actions, and explore longer pages in a more structured way.
Its main contributions are:
- Better access to related content.
- Less friction during navigation.
- Continuous orientation throughout the route.
- Clearer organization on content-rich pages.
Results
The outcome was an educational heritage platform made up of three digital routes: Barrio Huemul, The Normal School Women, and A+S Memory Site.
The project transformed academic material into a clearer, more navigable digital experience with a structure designed to improve organic visibility in search engines.
The platform made it possible to:
- Share heritage research content.
- Create interactive digital journeys.
- Improve the user experience.
- Facilitate access to historical and educational information.
- Strengthen communication around cultural heritage, historical memory, and civic education.
