Web Literacy Course & borrow.js

About the course

Web Literacy is a semester-long undergraduate design course at Universidad de los Andes which I taught between 2022 and 2023. In it, I introduced second and third year design students to frontend web technologies: HTML, CSS and basic javascript. Together we explored how to design meaningful interactions for the web, going past the known patterns and conventions to create more expressive online experiences. To do so, we initially avoided conventional web design software in an effort to stay away from the implicit conventions and limitations of these tools. Instead we tried to design the sites by hand first; using paper, clay, stationary and other handicrafts.

About the open source library

In order to allow students to explore javascript functionalities with their knowledge of HTML and CSS, I developed borrow.js: An open source plug-and-play javascript library that passes data from JS to CSS. This allows JS-only data (mouse position, scroll depth etc...) to be used directly from CSS. By using the library, students could take advantage of what js can do to prototype their ideas, before diving deep into learning js semantics.