Let me paint a picture. First day of class, first day of the masters, feeling really nervous and anxious, getting lost before actually getting to campus and to class and BOOM: Let’s start coding.
Back in Colombia I used to work in a big company that had many areas, one of them was involved with coding and I remember looking at those black screens with a lot of numbers and letters and not understanding what on Earth they were doing. I started to ask a few friends what that was and became close to one of them. She was a back-end developer and would explain to me what her job involved. Never thought I would have to do it in my masters, maybe that is why I was so scared to get into it.
First class did not understand a thing of what we were supposed to do, I tried doing things and paying attention, but I realized it was easier for me just to pay attention and then go back to the recordings and to what Tara was doing.
I also took some time to read more about HTML and CSS. Understand what they are and what they’re used for. Every website said HTML was easy to learn, that made me feel more overwhelmed. But, in the end of the day, understanding Interactive Design can be done with the use of these types of platforms. How can we create a website that is easy to navigate and entertaining through a set of codes and an interface?
Understanding CSS was also important, understanding that it is the language used to give a style or an aesthetic to an HTML document. Understanding that these is the component that will allow the user to look at the website and say: Ok, looks nice, nice colours, easy to read or dear GOD, no, not good colours, no scale, no proportion, no emphasis.
As I started to use some of the examples, read in W3 Schools what are the different codes and why they must be labeled in a certain order, everything started to become clearer. I started thinking of HTML as AutoCAD or Revit, my everyday software.
I learned both software by understanding what could be done with, using a little common sense and envisioning what I wanted to do. After that, it was a matter of asking Google, my teacher or friends how that could be done. With HTML and CSS is basically the same, putting into context how my website should look and starting to think what are the elements of the website that will allow the user to navigate it in an easy and clear way.
The different exercises of creating a website only with the scrolling option and another with the option of having hyperlinks, allowed me to understand how interactive design creates a different experience for the user.
The result was two website that I am actually proud of, only looking at the code and understanding what each of the elements do to the website makes it even better. Being able to inspect it, add colours, padding, borders, and many other elements that made the website more interesting, not super aesthetically appealing, but functional.
コメント