The purpose of this project is to:
- Assess your mastery of the HTML and CSS foundations covered in Unit 1
- Push you to reach for advanced HTML/CSS solutions to address new design challenges.
- Give you the opportunity to learn and raise awareness about a social issue that is of particular importance to you.
This project will be completed in groups of 2-3. Groups will add an additional set of complexities to this task, as developing software collaboratively requires coordinating schedules for meetings, negotiating product vision, developing and being disciplined about your Git workflow, among many other things. This, in fact, is the point. These are all thing that you will encounter on the job so we may as well begin preparing now! 😊
- Identify a cause or social issue in your communities that you want to support, learn more about, or raise awareness for. This could be national issue such as voter suppression, racial injustice, or education inequality. You could choose to highlight a local issue or one impacting your family's home country. What is important to note is that you do not have to be an expert on this issue nor does every single member of the group have to have expertise on an issue. You should think of this project as a learning experience that will start this week but will carry on throughout the year in L&D as we explore different social issue.
_Pro-Tip: Reach out to the the Marcy Lab Alumni on Slack for some suggestions on ideas to consider, if you find yourself stuck. This group has a number of interests and experiences that have been cultivated over the year.
- Perform initial research on this social issue. Each person in your group will find relevant information on the issue and bring it back to the group for review. Together, you will decide what information should be highlighted in your website.
- Your website will consist of multiple webpages linked together. After you have performed your initial research, you will create a wireframe or mockup for website. This will serve as the creative guide or outline for what you will build using HTML and CSS.
- You will implement the website collaboratively using industry best practices: Paired Programming, branching, merging, etc.
- Once your team completes the website, you will publish it using Github Pages. Your home page should be in a file named
index.html. This is a requirement to successfully publish your project on the web! - Your group will prepare a brief presentation in Google Slides in order to tell the story of the creation of your website. You will discuss the challenges and solutions that each member of the team had to overcome in order to ship the final version of your website.
- We will present our websites at the conclusion of Project Week. 🎉
- Start early. No matter when you begin, you will not feel like you will have enough time!
- Focusing on building out an MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
- Use a CSS Library Do not create your own CSS from stratch! You can add additional custom CSS, but start with a library like Bootstrap, Semantic, Bulma, Materialize, or any other CSS Library. This will save you so much time as if gives you beautiful, consistent styling out-of-the-box!
- Push yourself. This is the time to experiment with the more advanced techniques that you've been curious about. Don't be afraid to stretch yourself!
- That said, less is more. Pushing yourself should not come at the expense of your client. Take pride in being a designer for this project.
- In addition to using a CSS Library, you can check out the resources below to hone your design skills.