On December 7th, 1941, the Japanese Empire attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. They destroyed naval ships and airplanes, killed hundreds of sailors and personnel, and forced the United States into the Second World War. That day would always be, as President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated, “a date which will live in infamy.” The attack will forever live in the memories of the country and its citizens. However, these memories differ for various reasons, which is my project’s argument. People who have visited the memorial might have different memories of the event compared to people who only learned about it in school or had a family member serve in the war. This project hopes to show that people have different memories of the event and create a conversation around those memories.

I created a contribution element on the website to create this conversation around memories. Users can share their stories or images to contribute to the overall discussion. I have also added a section on both the stories and image contributions that asks users if they know anyone who served during that time or was there during the attack and if they have stories to share about them or if they told stories to them they would like to share. What people remember about their family members’ stories affects their memory of learning about the attack, so I added that feature for those people to share to create a more varied and rich conversation. While the project focuses on the memorial and remembrance of the event, there will be users who have not necessarily visited the memorial or have little knowledge of the event and want to learn more. The project has three exhibits to provide a memorial and historical background for those wishing to learn more before contributing. These exhibits are also there for the secondary audience of people researching the event or memorial. These exhibits hopefully provide an opportunity for people to learn more, and those contributions will discuss their prior or nonexistent memories and what they have learned while exploring the site. For example, one user only has prior knowledge from what they learned in high school. They looked through the exhibits and learned more than they had in school. In the contribution section, they discussed their prior knowledge and how learning more about it changed their views and memories of the attack.

I will look at the contributions themselves to see if these elements are performing as I want them to. If they provide various voices with rich conversations, I know they are performing well. However, there is a chance that the conversation is not varied or rich. At that point, I will see if it is a problem with outreach or if the forms on the contribution page need to be tweaked to allow for more varied conversations. Tweaking the contribution forms could mean changing the wording so users can understand the questions better or adding more elements or questions. When it comes to the exhibits, there are two ways I can see if they are performing well. One way is to look at the contributions and see if some mention the exhibits. Another way is to look at the views that the exhibits receive. If there are a lot of views, not just of the main page but also of the following pages, I know that users are looking at them and are appealing enough to look through the entire exhibit. If there are not that many views or many views on the main page but not on the following pages, they are either not appealing enough and more needs to be added, or more advertising of these exhibits is needed.

So far, with my project, I have completed three of the six pages in my exhibits. I plan on finishing those remaining three pages tomorrow. The next goal for this week is to fine-tune the website. I want to make sure that everything is running smoothly not only on desktop but also on mobile devices. I want the website to be usable on any device. I also want to see if the contribution page is working properly. I will add my contribution to the site so that I can see if the contributions are not only added but also included in the contribution collection. I will also see if family members want to add their contributions on different devices so I can see if it is working properly. The main challenge for this week is my health. I suffer from chronic pain, specifically migraines, and they heavily affected me this past week due to not only the crazy weather in Virginia but, more importantly, my stress levels. I want to ensure I do not stress myself out this week to get my work done.

This week, I was able to make my website more user-friendly. I changed the design to make it more appealing and created drop menus to make navigation easier. I also added a social media bar to the collections and individual items so users can share them with their circle. This could easily promote the site itself and potentially gain more users. One of the most significant changes I made was to add two new pages to the exhibits. I added a subsection to the After the Event page under the Historical Background exhibit to provide films created in a partnership between Hollywood and the United States government. Many of these films influenced the memory of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and they can provide not only historical information for researchers but also give the primary users, the contributors, more ways to think about their memories of the event than what was previously planned for the website. I also created a page under the About the Memorial Site exhibit titled Memorial Films. While finishing my research about the memorial, there was an emphasis on the films made for the site. For the same reasons as the previous page, I felt that creating a page dedicated to those films would benefit users.

One of the challenges for this week is to put in the information gathered for the exhibits. Now that the exhibit’s design and layout are complete, I can put the information I have gathered from my research on these pages. Another challenge is finding the items for the website. I still want to find a few items, especially when creating two new pages. Fortunately, I have already begun this process, so the hunt will not be extensive. This week’s last challenge is setting up the terms and conditions for the contribution page so users know what is expected and what they can expect from contributing to the project.

At this point in my project, I have found historical information that I will include on the website. One of the goals for this week is to continue looking through the material that I have gathered, including those discussing the memorialization of Pearl Harbor. I also plan to write out the information I have collected and make it understandable and beneficial for all website users. Unfortunately, I could not focus on my time management skills with the project and my other school commitments. I plan to make that my primary focus for the next couple of weeks to catch up and stay on schedule.

As said before, one main challenge is getting back and staying on schedule. Another challenge that I want to work on this week is making the website not only user-friendly but attractive as well. When I add the information to the website, the style, navigation, and exhibits are effortless for users. This would also give me an idea about how the information and format will look. I also want to do this before so that it will be less of a headache. One thing I learned last semester is that if you wait till the end to change the style and format, it can mess with how the information looks on the website, and it will not be user-friendly. Working on the format and style, I can see how the information and material will look on the website and plan accordingly.