Building Web Interfaces

Prerequisites: ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: ARTDES 115: Studio: 2D, ARTDES 120: Studio: 3D, ARTDES 125: Studio: 4D.

Description: Building Web Interfaces is a media-specific studio course that constitutes an introduction to the development, design, and construction of digital interfaces, with an emphasis on creating interfaces for the web. The course begins with the building blocks of web pages, in particular HTML and CSS, and moves on to issues of web architecture, site structure, and interface design. Students consider the increasing proliferation of interfaces in different devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, kiosks) as well as how to address all these platforms equally. By the end of the course, students conceive and develop interactive projects on their own, with attention paid to every step of the process. The emphasis of this course is on interface and navigation rather than on visual design — this is an introductory course to interface design, not a course in web design for graphic designers. Students use a text editor and an FTP client. Students can use available freeware or pay for other options at their own discretion. These options are made available to them at the beginning of the course.

Frequency: This course is typically offered in every winter term as well as in the fall term of even-numbered years, though scheduling may vary according to future term circumstances.