Creating Museum Multimedia for Everyone: Prototyping Workshop Formative Evaluation Report

Creating Museum Media for Everyone (CMME) is a proof-of-concept collaborative project between the Museum of Science (MOS) in Boston, WGBH's National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) and Ideum (Funded by NSF-DRL, award number 1114549). The project aims to show how digital interactive museum exhibit devices can be designed and developed for visitors who have a wide range of disabilities. Current deliverables include two exemplar exhibition components in which museum visitors will learn STEM concepts by manipulating and analyzing real data. To create these deliverables, CMME utilized an innovative workshop approach, which brought together individuals from a diverse range of fields to develop the digital interactive strategies. During the formative evaluation phase of the workshop, Audience Viewpoints assessed the workshop both in terms of practical effectiveness and in terms of meeting project goals. As the workshop was fundamental to the success of the CMME project, Audience Viewpoints spent considerable time documenting the workshop process. Specifically, this evaluation focused on the format and cohesion of the workshops (including composition of activities), suitability of the individuals involved, facilitation, pacing, and appropriate amounts of time and material resources. As the overall elements of the workshop are fundamental to potential dissemination within the field, we also reviewed the workshop model with the participants and have sought to situate that model within the larger field of similar design workshops.