Here’s a bit of I’m a Scientist history that we found in the drafts folder. Having been there for the past 8 or so years, we thought it deserved to see the light of day. So we’ve dusted it off, and wanted to share it as a piece of history – even if we have come quite far since then.
Looking for something more current?
Read out what we’ve been up to more recently ❯
Learn about 2024’s big changes to our delivery method ❯
Find out what a live Chat looks like now ❯
Developing live Chats
A long time ago (2016) in a galaxy right here, we ran an event called I’m an Astronaut, which ran alongside the build up and preparation of Tim Peake (British astronaut) going to space.
ESA and UK Space Agency funded the event and got Tim involved. He took part in the final live Chat of the event, after his space mission. After running the event for a year, we had selected several schools to take part in the big final “Tim Peake live Chat”.
That’s where we decided we needed to up-the-ante on the then-practical but out-of-date chat client we were using.
In 2017, I’m a Scientist developed more than any other time since it launched in 2010. One of the biggest developments, aside from the site itself, was creating a new live Chat system (pictured in use by Tim Peake, during the I’m an Astronaut event).
Here are a few ways we massively improved how the Chat ran and looked:
- It’s fully mobile responsive – it’s more accessible for scientists and students on whichever devices they might be using.
- It’s flexible and easy to implement – we can adapt it for each event more efficiently and at a lower cost than before.
- It’s adaptable to other languages and alphabets – we can keep expanding the event to new countries whilst maintaining identity and voice.
- It’s easier to navigate and, we think, much better looking – we added a few new features to make it more user friendly, like ‘replying’ to a scientist and threaded conversations, for example.
- Screen size – the live Chat now takes up the entire window, giving small mobile screens just as much visibility as bigger monitors.
One of the biggest challenges was making the live Chat look modern and intuitive for students and scientists to use, whilst maintaining the ease of moderation for the Mod Team. They need to be able to remove students or lines of Chat quickly and easily.
Then:
And now:
- Students on the left, scientists on the right – the Chat is easy to follow, much like Facebook chat or Whatsapp.
- Scientists – you can now see the scientists and their area of work or research on the sidebar.
- See suspended users – teachers who are logged in now have access to moderator tools, so they can suspend students and delete lines of Chat, as they see fit.
- ‘Show messages’ function – we got a lot of feedback from scientists suggesting a window for questions directed to just them, to help keep track during a busy live Chat.
