Mini-Workshops introduced tools, methods, or techniques. Issues were hashed out in Professional Forums. Crit Rooms featured a review of museum Web sites in "real time", and testing of attendees' Web sites took place in the Usability Lab.
For more details about types of presentations see the Description of Session Formats.
Mini-Workshops and Professional Forums
Speak out. Join in the discussion in these interactive sessions.
Crit Room
Experienced Web designers and new media managers reviewed real museum Web sites and offered their comments in the "Crit Room". Modeled on the art school critique, Web sites are volunteered in advance by MW2009 attendees who are present to pose the problem and respond.
If you are interested in having your site featured in the Crit Room, please contact
| Friday April 17, 2009 | |
| 1:00 pm- 3:00 pm Interaction |
Crit RoomJennifer Trant, Canada |
Usability Lab
On Friday, April 17, Michael Twidale will run a live Usability Lab. Delegates can:
- observe simple, low-cost, high-speed user testing of museum Web sites in action;
- volunteer to participate as a user tester and discover some of the problems users have on unknown sites; and
- volunteer sites to be tested.
Each user test lasts about 20 minutes (with time for comments and questions), and people move in and out of the session. Sites to be tested are not evaluated in advance and volunteer users are selected at random.
The "user" leaves the room while the owner of the site describes what they consider a typical scenario – something the average user would be trying to do. This scenario is converted into a task and given to the user to perform along with some randomly selected standard tasks. After each test, the user, site owner, test administrators and audience discuss what was learned.
Twidale and Marty demonstrate a variety of testing techniques throughout the day, but emphasize the thinking–aloud method so it is easy to follow along with the test subject. For more information about this technique, see Marty and Twidale's article Usability@90mph in First Monday.
If you are interested in having your site featured in the Usability Lab, please contact
| Friday April 17, 2009 | |
| 9:00 am- 11:00 am Interaction |
Usability LabMichael Twidale, USA |
Demonstrations
| Saturday April 18, 2009 | |
Interactions |
New cultural heritage informatics applications will featured up close on the morning of Saturday, April 18, 2009. |
