What I did:

The first thing I did was created a Pearltrees account and got to understand the interface and the functionality of the site. As well, in preparation for the essay that accompanies this project, I created sub tabs under my “Interrogate the Interface” menu tab.

Why I did it:

Pearltress is the interface that I am interrogating so in order to understand the affordances and constraints to the site I created an account and worked with the service for about an hour. I simply added content (from web pages to video files), deleted content, organized content into categories and “Collections,” and poked around community Pearltree user’s boards. Usability problems with any interface usually present themselves to first and second time users, so I tried to use as many of the tools that Pearltress has as possible.

My decision to create drop down tabs for the menu bar came from our in class analysis of past projects. This project will require a lot of written content, which will be published online, meaning it needs to be broken up so that it is easy to read for web users. These are just the tabs that I know I will need, but I will adjust the addition of more tabs as I better understand the different aspects of my project.