Poster presented on March 6-8, 2002 at the conference on Communicating the Future: Best Practices in Communication of Science and Technology to the Public, co-sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, and NIST. Poster topics were selected as "best practices" through a formal peer review by a committee of distinguished science writers, educators, and researchers.

Physics to the People
Program conducted by: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

The World Wide Web came from high-energy physics, so perhaps it is not surprising that Fermilab, a Department of Energy high-energy physics laboratory, has an historic Web site: the second ever established in the United States. Created in 1992 as tool for sharing physics data, the site developed through the 1990s into a tool for communicating with a wide range of audiences. As for Web design, navigation, architecture, graphic standards—we made them up as we went along. The result was a site that held a trove of physics knowledge and other information but was all but inaccessible to the average Web user.

In 1999, the Fermilab Office of Public Affairs undertook a complete overhaul of the laboratory’s entire public Web site: some 1,200 pages. Rather than attempting to rehabilitate the current site, we elected to start fresh—tabula rasa. We wanted to make the byzantine Fermilab Web site into a supple and effective communication tool.

The first step was to form a small, focused laboratory Web Group with both the requisite expertise and the authority to make decisions. (Lesson learned: Avoid big committees and long approval chains.)
The Web Group took time and care in the selection of a Web consultant. (Lesson learned: Unless you are a Web design firm, don’t try to do it yourself, especially if you’re a physics lab.) We chose Xeno Media, a local company with a portfolio of scientific and educational Web sites and a collaborative approach. We wanted great Web-design expertise but also the opportunity for significant participation ourselves. (Lesson learned: Location counts. E-mail proved no substitute for weekly onsite meetings between the contractor and the Web Group.)

We began the project with input from the laboratory community, audience analysis, a survey of comparable Web sites, and technical specifications. A look at the make-up of the audience reveals the biggest challenge we faced: physicists, students, teachers, the interested public, the media, funding agencies, government officials, employees, users—plus birdwatchers, folk-dancers, and patrons of the arts, each seeking something different from the Fermilab site. How to make it easy for all of them to find what they were looking for?

Building the new Web site took nearly a year. Xeno developed and refined the navigation scheme, with ongoing feedback from users. Public affairs staff wrote and edited content. We designated one day a week as “Web Day,” devoted entirely to work on the new site, with the contractor toiling alongside laboratory staff.

On March 1, 2001, we rolled out the new Web site, standing by to fix the inevitable glitches. Response was fast, and people liked it! Even the press weighed in. When Wired.com called our site “euro-cute,” we took it as a compliment.

Measuring the effectiveness of the new Web site in reaching audiences is straightforward. Weekly Webtrends reports—shared with laboratory management—and plenty of direct e-mail feedback tell us who uses the Web site and how, and where the problems are, allowing us to change to meet the needs of users, to build audiences and to strengthen our messages. (Lesson learned: A Web site is never done; its care and feeding must be someone’s daily responsibility.)

Contact
Mieke van den Bergen
Address: Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory
P.O. Box 500, MS 206
Batavia, IL 60510-0500
Phone: (630) 840-2326
bergen@fnal.gov

Budget
$60,000 for Web design consultant, plus significant staff time and expertise—the equivalent of about one full-time staff member.

Web Site

www.fnal.gov

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Created: 5/17/02
Last update: 8/17/02
Contact: inquiries@nist.gov