I've just finished the second week of my internship at the i.d.e.a. Museum, and it's been a busy one! I'm gathering results from the survey on the museum's website and analyzing web traffic with the help of the museum's marketing director, LaTonya Jordan-Smith. But the museum's staff is small, and I've found myself helping out in many different areas of work. On Wednesday I found myself in the workroom getting my hands dirty and ripping apart electronics with the exhibit designers!
Last week I talked about the adobe brick project I was getting started on, and we've been playing around with different mixtures to see what can be safely and easily used by the kids who come to the museum. That project is heavy on drying time, so meanwhile I helped build models for architectural designs that will be used in some high school classrooms.
Meanwhile publication day is approaching fast for Young Authors of Arizona (March 14th at Phoenix Book Company). Here's an interesting graph of the visit length data from our Tumblr from February 15th to February 28th:
Visitors who spent less than 30 seconds on our page tended to click on one post and leave the website, while visitors who spent longer than an hour clicked around the various links on the page. It's still hard to see what attracts those short-term visitors to the page (or what makes them leave) as the activity seems quite random, but hopefully I'll start seeing patterns.
It's been a great week--while this may seem obvious, spending the entire day around cute, happy kids definitely does wonders for your mood. Everyone at the i.d.e.a. Museum is always super cheerful and sweet, always having a great time, and it's not difficult to see why!
Last week I talked about the adobe brick project I was getting started on, and we've been playing around with different mixtures to see what can be safely and easily used by the kids who come to the museum. That project is heavy on drying time, so meanwhile I helped build models for architectural designs that will be used in some high school classrooms.
Meanwhile publication day is approaching fast for Young Authors of Arizona (March 14th at Phoenix Book Company). Here's an interesting graph of the visit length data from our Tumblr from February 15th to February 28th:
![]() |
| Visits to our Tumblr are split almost in half between brief visits and interested ones. |
It's been a great week--while this may seem obvious, spending the entire day around cute, happy kids definitely does wonders for your mood. Everyone at the i.d.e.a. Museum is always super cheerful and sweet, always having a great time, and it's not difficult to see why!

It's great that everyone is so cheerful over at i.d.e.a. , I'm sure it's positive reinforcement for the kids. :)
ReplyDeleteThe fact that half the people visiting spent less than 5 seconds on the site got me haha
Looking at it from the outside, the blog seems a bit...plain? I'm sure it's like that for a reason though. I'm not really sure how Tumblr works, but if there's any way to use the space on the left and the right, maybe it could be used to display a call-of-action for the readers, telling them what exactly they'll get if they subscribe. I say this because it could be possible unsubscribed readers who are nevertheless invested in YAA check the blog for updates and leave immediately if there are none.
So why exactly were you ripping apart electronics?
Oh and by the way, your pie chart completely spazzes out when I hover my mouse over it. It could just be my computer, but I'm just letting you know.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll think about changing the theme on the blog. You might be right about people checking for updates as a reason for very brief visits.
DeleteThe i.d.e.a. Museum likes to reuse electronics from previous exhibits but we had to get rid of some parts. :)
Oh no! That's not happening on my computer but it seems like a lot of people are having that problem. I'll try to fix it but I'm not sure what's causing it.
Same with my computer, with the spazzing out. Weird. HOWEVER this is amazing and I'm so happy that you're having good times!
ReplyDeleteThank you!
DeleteI'm glad you're enjoying yourself!
ReplyDeleteThe spazzing out thing is definitely happening to me too - it's very strange.
The variety must be fun - what's been the most unexpected thing you've helped with so far?
I think ripping apart the electronics was the most unexpected! But there's definitely something different to do every day.
DeleteHi Navya,
ReplyDeleteIt's good to hear that you've been busy. I'm thinking that the website visitors that stayed on the page for less than 5 seconds could be just clicking the back button on his or her browser. Or perhaps, the user accidentally clicked on the link. Is this data collected over a short duration? How do you distinguish data based on accidental searches and browsers left open even when the user isn't present from accurate data?
Unfortunately I can't distinguish data based on accidental searches and browsers left open. The reason I'm assuming the brief searches were intentional is because those visits spiked when a link to the website was sent out to award winners.
DeleteThe data was collected over two weeks.