Updates
What We Have Learned So Far: Thinking Partners
It's an intriguing question that you've most likely heard before or perhaps even asked yourself at one point or another, “If you could invite any six guests, dead or alive, to your dinner party, whom would you invite?" Typical responses range from world leaders, to famous athletes, influential authors, or A-list celebrities. It's an entertaining exercise that helps outsiders learn a little more about the respondent—what are their ...
Students Get Their Hands on the Prototype
For a couple of days in early October, researchers from SCLDA travelled to California to work with our collaborators, Navigation North, and two schools in Chico, California to better understand how young folks (these were 6th graders), especially those in a classroom, might access and use the digital assets of the Smithsonian. We had a great time, learned a lot, and are very thankful to the principals, teachers, and students who off...
Codename Design Joins the Learning Lab Development Team
Happy to announce that our team continues to expand with the addition of Marc Baumgartner and Graham Dobson of Codename Design, a product, web, and graphic design studio based in Vancouver, Canada. Marc and Graham are helping the team think about all the details of the user experiences we are trying to develop, and then designing the actual user interface for the Learning Lab, ensuring that it is contemporary, simple to use, and ...
Sampling and Remixing
Something I have been thinking about, in terms of cultural heritage, and the kinds of things we take care of here at the Smithsonian, and how they might become more useful to you, is sampling. DJ and Producer Mark Ronson talks about music in terms of a “post sampling era:" We live in a post sampling era. We take the things that we love and we build upon them. That's just how it goes. When we add something significant and origi...
Who Is Our Audience: SmithsonianEducation.org
One of the foundational questions asked that led to the development of the Learning Lab was: who are we serving now? Who is our audience? Beginning in 2009 and running continuously for 2 years, a user satisfaction survey (using the American Customer Satisfaction Index) was conducted on the Smithsonian’s primary website for teachers, SmithsonianEducation.org. The study was originally intended to highlight areas of improvement t...
