MW2005 features a variety of interactions so you can learn from the concrete experiences of others. 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. You can also take a Close-Up look at a 3-D learning interactive.

Interactions are listed chronologically below, or you can see an overview of the program. For more information about types of sessions, consult the Presentation Formats.

Mini-Workshops

Focused one-hour mini-workshop sessions are designed to introduce tools, methods, or techniques for developing, maintaining and evaluating museum Web sites.

Professional Forums

Each Professional Forum allows MW attendees to voice their opinions about issues of concern to the profession. Conveners will present their cases for new kinds of professional information exchanges and for new methods of museum content aggregation. Attendees can speak out about the proposals and made their own suggestions.

Crit Rooms

Experienced Web designers 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 MW2005 attendees who are present to respond.

If you are interested in presenting your site in the Crit Room, please contact . Space is limited, and sites will be selected by the organisers.

Usability Lab

On Friday, April 15, a "User Testing" laboratory will run all day long. The purpose of the session is to provide an opportunity for conference participants to 1) observe user testing of museum Web sites in action; 2) volunteer to participate as a user test subject and discover some of the problems users have on unknown sites; and 3) volunteer their site to be tested. We encourage people to drift in and out of the session all day long--as they move, for example, from one talk to another. Each user test will last 20 minutes or so (with time for audience comments and questions). Therefore, it will be very easy for individuals to observe and even participate in this session without having to sacrifice a large amount of time.

Michael Twidale and Paul Marty will administer the user tests. Sites to be tested will not be evaluated in advance and volunteer users will be selected at random. Anyone can signup for a time to have their site to be tested.

Volunteer user testers will be selected at random. The volunteer user will temporarily leave the room while the owner of the site describes what they consider a typical scenario of use--something the average visitor to the site would be trying to do. These scenarios will then converted into a task, which together with some randomly selected standard tasks, will be given to the user to perform during the test.

The site will be projected on a big screen for the audience to follow the user's experience. The user is then brought back into the room and we conduct a simple, low-cost, high-speed user test. Twidale and Marty will demonstrate a variety of testing techniques throughout the day--but will emphasize the thinking aloud method so that the audience can easily follow the test subject's thoughts.

After the conclusion of each test, the user, site owner, test administrators and audience will discuss briefly what was learned.

Close-Up and Hands-On

Get a hands-on look at a learning interactive in use now in Europe. Participate yourself.