Museum Collections and Online Users: Development of a Segmentation Model for the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Full Paper
Villaespesa, E. (2019).
This article presents a segmentation of users who visit The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online collection. The six segments defined in this study are professional researcher, personal interest information-seeker, student researcher, inspiration-seeker, casual browser, and visit planner. The study combines web analytics with more traditional survey methods to show how digital research tools can be incorporated into visitor studies in the emerging domain of online product evaluation. The results of this user research advance the understanding of museum website audiences, with detailed data and descriptions of each segment. The article argues that it is important for museums to create multiple kinds of online experiences to reflect the varying motivations, art background, context, and online behavior of website users. Moreover, the article provides a discussion on the implications of this user diversity for evaluating the impact and value of online museum collections. The evaluation framework needs to include metrics to measure the user experience by considering the online collection from three perspectives: as a resource for research and learning, as a source of inspiration, and as a tool for planning a visit to the museum.
User Experience (UX) Capacity-Building: A Conceptual Model and Research Agenda
Full Paper
MacDonald, C. M. (2019).
Many User Experience (UX) practitioners face organizational barriers that limit their ability to influence product decisions. Unfortunately, there is little concrete knowledge about how to systematically overcome these barriers to optimize UX work and foster a stronger organizational UX culture. This paper introduces the concept of User Experience Capacity-Building (UXCB) to describe the process of building, strengthening, and sustaining effective UX practices throughout an organization. Through an integrated literature review of relevant HCI and capacity-building research, this paper defines UXCB and proposes a conceptual model that outlines the conditions, strategies, and outcomes that define a UXCB initiative. Five areas of future research are presented that aim to deepen our understanding of UXCB as both a practice and an area of scholarship.
EduCHI 2019 Symposium: Global Perspectives on HCI Education
Workshop/Symposium
St-Cyr, O., MacDonald, C. M., & Churchill, E. F. (2019).
At CHI 2018, a workshop on developing a community of practice to support global HCI education was held, building on six years of research and collaboration in the area of HCI education. Many themes emerged from the workshop activities and discussions. Two particularly stood out: creating channels for discussions related to HCI education and providing a platform for sharing HCI curricula and teaching experiences. To that end, we are organizing a CHI 2019 symposium dedicated exclusively to HCI education: EduCHI 2019: Global Perspectives on HCI Education. The symposium will focus on the canons of HCI education in 2019 and beyond. It will offer a venue for HCI educators across disciplinary and geographical borders to discuss, dissect, and debate HCI teaching and learning. Through keynote addresses, paper presentations, and a panel discussion, we aim to discuss current and future HCI education trends, curricula, pedagogies, teaching practices, and diverse and inclusive HCI education. Post-symposium initiatives will aim to document and publish the discussions from the symposium.
The Met’s Object Page: Towards a New Synthesis of Scholarship and Storytelling
Full Paper
Villaespesa, E., Tankha, M., and Shehu, B. (2019).
The Met’s “object page” is the first touchpoint for over 70% of the visitors to its online collection. The user journey to this experience and throughout it has many permutations and goals. Users come from a variety of sources: search engines, social media, other websites, and are greatly diverse in their motivations and familiarity with art. The 450,000+ Object pages are a testament to the encyclopedic nature of The Met itself—offering a great breadth and depth of meticulously cultivated information and highlighting the connectivity of cultures and multiple interpretations of the objects it exhibits. The objects themselves span a dizzying array of media: painting, sculpture, manuscripts, jewelry, coins, tapestry, baseball cards, furniture, musical instruments, and more. A significant challenge clearly arises: how to display all of this ever-expanding information to tell the story of the artwork in a manner that is authentic, comprehensive, accessible, and inspiring to all users—whether academic or casual browsers—across devices. As museums try to define their existence in the digital space, how does the object page contribute in projecting The Met’s voice and expand its outreach beyond the museum’s walls. To achieve this end, the digital team at The Met conducted extensive qualitative and quantitative tests on the pages to gauge users’ online behavior, interests, expectations, and frustrations, across user segments and devices. The methods and tools used included web analytics, heatmaps, user testing (both remote and face-to-face), surveys, user interviews, and A/B testing. This paper will present the findings about the user expectations, preferences, and behaviors on the object page as well as a discussion of the benefits and challenges of the methods used to collect and analyze the data.
The HCI living curriculum as a community of practice
Commentary
St-Cyr, O., Jovanovic, A., Chignell, M., MacDonald, C. M., & Churchill, E. (2018).
HCI education reflects the continual evolution of HCI, embracing the changing landscapes of technology, infrastructure, and technology use. This forum aims to provide a platform for HCI educators, practitioners, researchers, and students to share their perspectives, reflections, and experiences related to HCI education.
Developing a Community of Practice to Support Global HCI Education
Workshop/Symposium
St-Cyr, O., MacDonald, C. M., Churchill, E. F., Preece, J. J., & Bowser, A. (2018).
ACM SIGCHI has been supporting research in HCI education for many years, most actively from 2011-2014. At CHI2014, a workshop on developing a new HCI living curriculum was held, building on three years of research and collaboration. We believe the time is right to develop and implement the suggested HCI living curriculum. We propose a hands-on workshop to develop a concrete active community of practice of HCI scholars and educators, sharing and collaborating to develop course outlines, curricula, and teaching materials. The workshop will define the conceptual framework and user experience of the HCI living curriculum, develop its information architecture and infrastructure, and evaluate how existing platforms do and do not fulfill the proposed needs. Post-workshop initiatives will aim to move towards implementing the first iteration of the living curriculum.
Assessing the implementation of authentic, client‐facing student projects in user experience (UX) education: Insights from multiple stakeholders
Full Paper
MacDonald, C. M. & Rozaklis, L. (2017).
User experience (UX) is often cited as one of the fastest growing occupations, creating opportunities across nearly every sector for individuals skilled in the application of user‐centered design principles and methods. Many information and library schools have responded to this demand by introducing more UX coursework into their curriculum, but the proliferation of agile software development and lean product design has incentivized organizations to look for experienced individuals for UX roles, even those that are considered entry‐level. As a result, aspiring information professionals face a paradoxical situation in which they are required to have UX experience before they can gain UX experience. This article provides an assessment of one institution’s efforts to overcome this experience gap by offering opportunities for students to participate in three types of authentic client‐facing UX projects. Through surveys of students and clients served over four academic years, we provide a set of lessons learned and recommended best practices for incorporating project‐based learning opportunities into UX courses.
Assessing the user experience (UX) of online museum collections: Perspectives from design and museum professionals
Full Paper
MacDonald, C. M. (2015).
Studies show that online museum collections are among the least popular features of a museum website, which many museums attribute to a lack of interest. While it’s certainly possible that a large segment of the population is simply uninterested in viewing museum objects through a computer screen, it is also possible that a large number of people want to find and view museum objects digitally but have been discouraged from doing so due to the poor user experience (UX) of existing online-collection interfaces. This paper describes the creation and validation of a UX assessment rubric for online museum collections. Consisting of ten factors, the rubric was developed iteratively through in-depth examinations of several existing museum-collection interfaces. To validate the rubric and test its reliability and utility, an experiment was conducted in which two UX professionals and two museum professionals were asked to apply the rubric to three online museum collections and then provide their feedback on the rubric and its use as an assessment tool. This paper presents the results of this validation study, as well as museum-specific results derived from applying the rubric. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the rubric may be used to improve the UX of museum-collection interfaces and future research directions aimed at strengthening and refining the rubric for use by museum professionals.