Screen shot of MeditOcean video series on the Monterey Bay Aquarium website

Interview with The Guardian: Aquariums report wave of webcam visits amid Covid shutdown

Blog Post

Earlier this year, traffic to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s website spiked to triple its usual visitation. The reason? Live webcams of soothing jellies and frolicking sea otters. In a world turned upside down by a global pandemic, people sought ways to cope and to connect. In this interview with The Guardian’s Elle Hunt, I talked about how digital content like livestreams and guided ocean meditation videos (“MeditOceans”) enable institutions like the aquarium to bring inspiring experiences—and some much-needed relief—to people around the world.

Read the article: “Aquariums report wave of webcam visits amid Covid shutdown.”

Serving researchers in a self-service world

Published Writing, Talk/Presentation

In a world in which a family historian can type her grandfather’s name into Ancestry.com to start building a family tree, and a journalist can Google to download public domain images, where do the collections searches, online tools, and APIs that museums and archives provide fit in? This paper outlines strategies for better serving people who are looking for the knowledge and expertise within your collections and staff. At the National Archives and Records Administration of the United States, we undertook a significant user experience (UX) research project to better understand the online experiences of professional researchers, family historians, and history enthusiasts. Research methods included audits of existing user data (e.g., Google Analytics, survey data) as well as new user interviews, usability testing, a survey, and a landscape analysis. Key findings include the fact that researchers struggle to complete their tasks using existing online tools; people researching family history are particularly unsatisfied and in need of better support; and all audiences require just-in-time help and appropriate orientation to archival research. A major challenge highlighted by this research is how to meet user expectations for item-level records while providing access to digitized records at massive scale.

Read the full paper, originally published in Museums and the Web: Selected Papers from Museums and the Web 2018.

View slides.