Design Workshop
July 26th, 2006 by Jim SpadacciniAs part of the ExhibitFiles design process, we conducted a workshop at the Lawrence Hall of Science, Berkeley, California, June 13-14, 2006. Most of the workshop participants were exhibit developers, the primary users of the website.
We focused on potential features of the ExhibitFiles site. Card sorting, free-listing, and a lot of discussion over the two days really helped move our thinking along.
We’ve captured some of the results from this meeting in a Design Workshop Document (880K PDF). As always, your comments and questions are welcomed.
August 8th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
In the Design Workshop Document, Jim talks about card sorting and freelisting, two methods for getting at how people are thinking and talking about a topic. The website Boxes and Arrows provides some good background about these methods, which could also be useful in exhibit planning.
About card sorting:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/card_sorting_a_definitive_guide
About freelisting:
http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/beyond_cardsorting_free_listing_methods_to_explore_user_categorizations
August 17th, 2006 at 6:07 am
Do you have plans to have online repository of exhibit photographs? Labels, display, visitors, etc. If you know of any, I’m collecting URLs to such sites.
This blog is great — can’t wait to read more.
August 17th, 2006 at 10:46 am
Colin,
This is very much a work in progress but at the moment we’ve been exploring “case studies” and “reviews” as an organizing principle. This would be for both individual exhibits and larger exhibitions. “Case studies” would be descriptions of projects that a contributor worked on. “Reviews” would be descriptions of exhibits/exhibitions that the contributor observed.
Each of these types of descriptions would allow for images, video, documents, and other materials to be added to the ExhibitFiles “collection.” So the long answer is “Yes” we hope to have the many of the materials that you’ve suggested.
If you have suggestions about what you’d like to see on the site and what materials (and features) would be most useful, please feel free. One of the tougher tasks we have to prioritize what types of information from exhibits/exhibitions is most useful to exhibit developers.
Jim
August 28th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
[...] Since ExhibitFiles will be a community-built website, it was decided early on to require a membership (it will be free) for authoring and commenting. Since our design workshop, we’ve been actively exploring how we might structure “personal profiles” within the ExhibitFiles community. [...]
September 7th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
[...] This idea originated in the design workshop in Berkeley in June, and it has stuck with us ever since. There was some discussion that reviews might seem too formal, but given the changing nature of the term it seems appropriate. Afterall, anyone can write a review on Amazon or similar sites. [...]
October 22nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm
[...] This idea originated in the design workshop in Berkeley in June, and it has stuck with us ever since. There was some discussion that reviews might seem too formal, but given the changing nature of the term it seems appropriate. Afterall, anyone can write a review on Amazon or similar sites. [...]
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:37 am
[...] Posts: Remember and Design Workshop [...]