Lectures

Date Lecture Topic(s) Homework (for next class)
2025-12-03 27 Outside Pressures to Design
Project Time
  • Final Project due December 15
  • Readings:
    • Chapter 7 of [DET]
  • Reading Quiz 21 (Gradescope)
  • Study for Quiz 11 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-12-01 26 Design Thinking Questions
Project Time
  • Final Project due December 15
  • Readings:
    • Sections 3.2-3.4 of [HWD]
    • Begin reading Chapter 7 of [DET]
2025-11-19 25 Design Thinking
Homework Time!
  • HW 8 due December 1 (Updated)
  • Readings:
    • Pages 221-257 of [DET] (Chapter 6)
  • Enjoy break!
  • No Quiz on Monday after break
2025-11-17 24 Designing for Errors
Bootstrap Framework Customization
Quiz 10 (in class)
  • HW 8 due November 19
  • Readings:
    • Pages 217-221 of [DET] (Chapter 6 up to "The Human-Centered Design Process")
  • Reading Quiz 20 (Gradescope)
  • Bonus: Attend Q-Club talk on Monday (4:20-4:50) and take a selfie
2025-11-12 23 Mistakes and Slips
Bootstrap Framework Use
Day 23 HTML
  • HW 8 due November 19
  • Readings:
    • Pages 173-216 of [DET] (Finish Chapter 5)
  • Reading Quiz 19 (Gradescope...coming Thursday)
  • Study for Quiz 10 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
  • Bonus: Attend Q-Club talk on Monday (4:20-4:50) and take a selfie
2025-11-10 22 Bootstrap Framework Overview
Quiz 9 (in class)
  • HW 8 due November 19
  • Readings:
    • Pages 162-173 of [DET] (Chapter 5 up to "Classification of Slips")
  • Reading Quiz 18 (Gradescope)
  • Bonus: Attend Q-Club talk on Monday (4:20-4:50) and take a selfie
2025-11-05 21 Design Constraints
Responsive Web Designs
Bootstrap Framework Overview
  • HW 8 due November 17
  • Readings:
  • Reading Quiz 17 (Gradescope...likely posted Thursday)
  • Bonus: Attend Q-Club on Thursday (12-12:30) and take a selfie
  • Bonus: Attend Q-Club talk on Monday (4:20-4:50) and take a selfie
  • Study for Quiz 9 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-11-03 20 Relative, Absolute, Fixed Layout
CSS custom properties
Quiz 8 (in class)
  • Readings:
  • Reading Quiz 16 (Gradescope)
  • Bonus: Attend Q-Club on Thursday (12-12:30) and take a selfie
2025-10-29 19 Flex layout example
Relative, Absolute, Fixed Layout
Box layout
CSS custom properties
  • Readings:
  • Reading Quiz 15 (Gradescope)
  • Study for Quiz 8 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-10-27 18 Flex layout
Knowledge and Design
Quiz 7 (in class)
2025-10-22 17 CSS Styling Continued
Box Model
Floats
Flexbox (time permitting)
  • Readings:
  • Reading Quiz 12 (Gradescope) — extended due date
  • Reading Quiz 13 (Gradescope)
  • Study for Quiz 7 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-10-20 16 Web styling
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
2025-10-15 15 Forms
Web3Forms: Contact Forms for Modern Websites
2025-10-13 14 Links
Images
Quiz 6 (in class)
2025-10-08 13 HTML Continued
Semantic Tags
Links
  • Readings:
  • Reading Quiz 10 (Gradescope)
  • Study for Quiz 6 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-10-06 12 Introduction to HTML
Quiz 5 (in class)
2025-10-01 11 Figma Continued
Typeography Continued
Whitespace Continued
Layout and Hierarchy
Hierarchy Example
Top 50 Google Font Pairings
Landbook - website design inspiration gallery
Adobe Color Contrast Analyzer
  • HW 5 (see Canvas)
  • Readings:
    • Pages 63-77 of [HWD] (Sections 2.7-2.9)
  • Reading Quiz 8 (Gradescope) — extended due date
  • Study for Quiz 5 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-09-29 10 Figma Continued
Accessibility in Color
Typography
Whitespace
Quiz 4 (in class)
  • Readings:
    • Pages 48-62 of [HWD] (Sections 2.5-2.6)
  • Reading Quiz 8 (Gradescope)
2025-09-24 9 Figma Continued
Color Palettes
Accessibility in Color
  • HW 4 (see Canvas)
  • Readings:
  • Reading Quiz 6 (Gradescope) — extended due date
  • Reading Quiz 7 (Gradescope)
  • Study for Quiz 4 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-09-22 8 Mocking
Grid Layout
Figma
Quiz 3 (in class)
  • Make sure you complete the Figma education verification step in order to get free access to Figma's pro features
  • Readings:
  • Reading Quiz 6 (Gradescope)
2025-09-17 7 Building a Jekyll Site
Minimal Mistakes Theme
  • HW3 (See Canvas)
  • Readings:
    • None
  • BONUS: attend a Laurentian Weekend event you are not directly participating in (Upload Selfie to Gradescope)
  • Study for Quiz 3 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-09-15 6 Design Principles
Building a Jekyll Site
Minimal Mistakes Theme
Quiz 2 (in class)
  • HW3 (See Canvas)
  • Readings:
    • Pages 7-16 of [HWD] (Section 2.1)
  • Reading Quiz 5 (Gradescope)
2025-09-10 5 Content Management Systems
Jekyll on GitHub Pages
Jekyll _config.yml file Minimal Mistakes Theme
  • Readings:
    • Pages 44-73 of [DET] (Finish Chapter 2)
  • Reading Quiz 4 (Gradescope)
  • Study for Quiz 2 (prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz)
2025-09-08 4 How the Web Works
Interfacing VSCode with GitHub
Quiz 1 (in class)
  • Readings:
    • Pages 37-44 of [DET] (Chapter 2 up to "Human Thought: Mostly Subconscious")
  • Reading Quiz 3 (Gradescope)
2025-09-03 3 Markdown Continued
Absolute vs Relative URLs
Interfacing VSCode with GitHub
  • HW2 (See Canvas)
  • Readings:
    • Pages 10-36 of [DET] (the rest of Chapter 1)
    • Basic Syntax on Markdown Guide
  • Reading Quiz 2 (Gradescope)
  • Study for Quiz 1 (in class next time)
    • prepare 3x5 index card for reference during quiz
  • BONUS Point: Attend Q-Club Thursday, September 4 at Noon (Upload Selfie to Gradescope)
2025-09-01 2 Evaluating popular websites
Chrome developer tools
Markdown
2025-08-27 1 First Class
What is this class about?
What is the web?
What is design?
  • HW1 (See Canvas)
  • Readings:
    • Introduction and Chapter 1 of [HWD]
    • Pages 1–10 of [DET] (stop before Fundamental Principles of Interaction)