Throughout the process of planning my CHI project this semester, I have begun to delve into various ways that it is possible to integrate interactive elements into a webpage. One in particular that has caught my eye is the use of drag and drop JavaScript, specifically the draggable JavaScript library. This is Javascript library that was developed by Max Hoffmann and Curtis Dulmage and released under the MIT license, allowing it to be used for both personal and commercial use.

This library is available on GitHub. Using the library, you are able to drag and drop elements, make elements swap places, and move elements within a list, among others.

This library could prove to be very useful in integrating interactive features that could be tailored to fit a topic or discipline. Personally, I think there are many ways that this library could be adopted for use in archaeological outreach. For example, one way I envision adapting this library is in an activity that that asks visitors to sort artifacts from oldest to newest or to place them into different functional categories. Using drag and drop JavaScript in this way would give online visitors an introduction into how archaeologists think and begin to interpret artifacts.

I will continue to research different JavaScript libraries with similar functionalities to determine which that could prove most useful for my joint CHI project with Jeff Painter.