This museum’s mission is to inspire the inventive genius in everyone by presenting compelling experiences that are real and educational; the mission of its Web site is to be a virtual extension of the museum’s transformative experiences, reaching beyond the institution’s walls to captivate a variety of users in the home, classroom and community.

The site provides hands-on science experiments to try at home, allows teachers to access new and engaging activities to use in their classrooms, and helps families plan visits. It's inviting and easy to use—whether the visit is goal- or entertainment-oriented—and provides quick, clear access to the basic areas of interest: visit planning and info, exhibit details, online science activities and educational resources.

• With five distinct audience segments, the target audience winds up including just about everyone between the ages of 8 and 80.

• The previous site used approximately 700 hand-coded static pages, making site-wide changes very painful.

• About 20 people from the museum and two agencies, across four time zones, worked on the site.

• While not part of a specific promotional campaign, the launch of the redesign coincided with the museum’s 75th anniversary year and its announcement of “Science Rediscovered,” a campaign to take a leadership role in supporting science education.