Bringing Collections On-line for Children: Using Front-End Research to Develop an Interface

Beth Alberty, Brooklyn Children's Museum, USA
Jill Fruchter, Brooklyn Children's Museum, USA
http://www.brooklynkids.org/emuseum/code/emuseum.asp

Demonstration: Demonstrations - Session 1

Brooklyn Children's Museum, the world's first museum created expressly for children, is also the first children's museum to put its collections on-line, at Collections Central Online. The site is designed for children ages 8 and up and was recently cited by Forbes.com as a "Best of the Web" children's museum Web site. It features a growing number of artifacts from the Museum's 30,000+ collection of cultural artifacts and natural history specimens from all over the world. The objects are catalogued in The Museum System by Gallery Systems; the on-line site was created using a licensed version of the companion eMuseum that allows for customization. The challenge was to make this utilitarian, adult-oriented database software interesting and fun for children. Front-end evaluation with children helped establish priorities, emphasis, and style. MediaCombo provided production, design, and programming services.

Our focus in this paper is on the research with end users, children ages 8+, that guided our design of the on-line interface for our collections management database.