Interactions
April 9-12, 2008
Montréal, Québec, Canada

Interactions

Mini-Workshops introduce tools, methods, or techniques. Crit Rooms feature a review of museum Web sites in "real time" and testing of attendees' Web sites takes place in the Usability Lab. Issues are hashed out in Professional Forums. 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.

Friday April 11, 2008
9:30 am-
10:30 am
Mini-Workshop

Scanning the Horizon: Emerging Technologies for Museums

Susan Chun, Larry Johnson, Leonard Steinbach, USA

9:30 am-
10:30 am
Mini-Workshop

YouTube to MuseTube - Now we have Web 2.0 tools, how do we use them?

David Greenfield, USA

10:00 am-
11:00 am
Mini-Workshop

Funding Programs for Technology in Museums

Anne-Marie Millner, Canada, Sonia Feigenbaum, Christopher Mackie, USA

11:00 am-
12:00 pm
Mini-Workshop

Towards new metrics of success for online museum projects

Sebastian Chan, Australia

11:00 am-
12:00 pm
Professional Forum

The Meta Art Museum: Towards the Promise of an Open Collaboration Platform

Jenna Fleming, Scott Shunk, Jeff Steward, USA

11:30 am-
12:30 pm
Mini-Workshop

3D imaging: A Glimpse into the future!

Jean-François Lapointe, Eric Paquet, Corey Timpson, Canada

12:30 pm-
1:30 pm
Mini-Workshop

Semantic Dissonance: Do We Need (And Do We Understand) The Semantic Web?

Ross Parry, Nick Poole, Jon Pratty, United Kingdom

12:30 pm-
1:30 pm
Mini-Workshop

User Expectations

Steven Smith, Australia

12:30 pm-
1:30 pm
Mini-Workshop

Wiki Software and Facilities for Museums

Jonathan Bowen, United Kingdom

1:00 pm-
2:00 pm
Mini-Workshop

Agile Methods for Project Management

David Ellis, Michael Jenkins, Willy Lee, Rob Stein, USA

2:00 pm-
3:00 pm
Mini-Workshop

Beyond launch: Museum videos on YouTube

Chris Alexander, Allegra Burnette, Dan Dark, David Hart, Nicole Minor, Jennifer Rossi, USA

2:00 pm-
3:00 pm
Professional Forum

What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community?

Mike Ellis, Ross Gardler, Brian Kelly, United Kingdom

3:30 pm-
4:30 pm
Mini-Workshop

Just Do It! Web 2.0 as task not technology

Gail Durbin, United Kingdom

3:30 pm-
4:30 pm
Mini-Workshop

Scratch: online, interactive, social programming language from the MIT LifeLong Kindergarten Group

Liddy Nevile, Australia

4:00 pm-
5:00 pm
Mini-Workshop

Using standardized methods to present three-dimensional content on the web in the context of cultural heritage

Christian Derler, Otmar Moritsch, Sandra Murg, Wolfgang Pensold, Austria

Crit Rooms

Experienced Web designers and new media managers review real museum Web sites and offer their comments in the "Crit Room". Modeled on the art school critique, Web sites are volunteered in advance by MW2008 attendees who are present to pose the problem and respond.

Friday April 11, 2008
11:30 am-
1:00 pm
Evaluation

Crit Room - 1

Chair: Jennifer Trant, Canada

Panel

Bruce Wyman, Denver Art Museum
Scott Sayre, Sandbox Studios

Sites

1. Seattle Art Museum

http://www.seattleartmuseum.org/emuseum/code/closeups.asp
Christina DePaolo , New Media Manager

2. AIC Online Collections

http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections 
Carissa Kowalski Dougherty, Department of Museum Technology

3. Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania

http://www.icaphila.org
Johanna L. Plummer, Curator of Education

2:30 pm-
4:00 pm
Evaluation

Crit Room - 2

Chair: Jennifer Trant, Canada

Panel

Bryan Kennedy, Science Museum of Minnesota
Susan Hazan, The Israel Museum, Jerusalem / Jennifer Freund, Second Life [Susan will be present in Second Life]

Sites

1. Glenbow Museum

http://www.glenbow.org
Cherry Sham, New Media Coordinator

2. Life Through the Lens: The Exploratorium Microscope Imaging Station

http://www.exploratorium.edu/imaging_station_new/features.php
robin marks, multimedia projects developer

3. Encyclopaedia of Life

http://www.eol.org
Kate Haley Goldman, Institute for Learning Innovation

 

 

Usability Lab

On Friday, April 11, Michael Twidale and Paul Marty will run a live Usability Lab. You'll be able to:

  1. observe simple, low-cost, high-speed user testing of museum Web sites in action;
  2. volunteer to participate as a user tester and discover some of the problems users have on unknown sites; and
  3. volunteer your site to be tested.

Each user test lasts about 20 minutes (with time for comments and questions) and people drift 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 scenarios 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 will discuss what was learned.

Twidale and Marty will demonstrate a variety of testing techniques throughout the day, but will 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 seeing your site in the Usability Lab, please contact Space is limited, and sites will be selected by the organizers.

Friday April 11, 2008
9:30 am-
11:30 am
Evaluation

Usability Lab

Paul Marty, Michael Twidale, USA

1:30 pm-
3:30 pm
Evaluation

Usability Lab - 2

Paul Marty, Michael Twidale, USA

Demonstrations

See new cultural heritage informatics applications up close and speak with their creators, on Saturday, April 12, 2008.

Close-Up and Hands-On

Once in a while an impressive project catches our imagination and we want to share it with the community. If you've got something special that you'd like to see featured at MW2008, please