I was inspired to build this demo for this eLearning community challenge. The task was to find a creative use for drop-down menus. Click here to try this demo for yourself.

I wanted to do more with drop-down menus than simply use them for navigation; I wanted the menus to manipulate the content. I wanted users to interact directly with the information, rather than simply navigate between static slides.

I started by gathering content from Statistics Canada. I originally wanted to display data about renewable energy , but ultimately chose data that more easily invited comparison between provinces. I imagined building something for a social studies class, for junior high or high school students.

Once I finished the basic interface, I realized that I needed to motivate the audience to continue searching. For this purpose, I created a series of simple questions (along the bottom) that requires users to lookup the information.

The interface was getting fairly complex, so in addition to streamlining a couple systems, I added a tutorial to guide first-time users.