Reading Assignment

Well, if we have time to get to the reading assignments- here is a brief summary of some intersting / key information about the article I chose.

First and foremost, it appears as though we as museum practitioners need be cognizent of our website audience, and the traditional models for "visitors" to the museum do not hold true to website users. To determine our audience and users we should look at things like: audience and visitor studies, marketing, evaluation, and usability.

The author's describe website users in four ways: visitors, searchers, browsers, and transactors. Interesting, when looking at the percentages, that the "searchers" are 47.9% of the website traffic.

And here are the key points from the end of the article (good discussion points, as well!)-

- The website exists within a marketplace
- Be clear about the site goals (market, organization, user perspective)
- Design in accordance with those goals
- Desing in an information space- the website is not a replica of the physical museum
- Test with target users (all along the way)
- Evaluate in terms of goals

Web Evaluations

Here is the link to the paper I will be reading, figured I could double-up my technologies homework with my 10 hours of volunteer time with Tara.

http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/peacock/peacock.html

Audiences, Visitors, Users: Reconceptualising Users of Museum On-line Content and Services.

Went to Ladle Rat Rotten Hut @ the exploratorium- needed to download a Real Player.

Found one link to long dead interactive museum sites: http://www.disobey.com/ghostsites/mef.shtml

I couldn't get out of this one: http://www.onfjeunesse.ca/lamission/html/en/labo_fla.php

You need a lot of downloads in order to run these interactives.

Sunset in Durango

Well, it has been interesting trying to make a go of this blog. First, I realized that I have two blogs- somehow, on the first day of class, I started up two different blogs. So, I was royally confused when I posted a picture and it wasn't on the blog... Then, I realized that the format of the one blog was really different than the other one.

This is a picture of a sunset in Durango- I got a couple photos like this over the winter, where the colors are amazing.

Museum and Technologies Class

First assignment: Set-up a blog.