This week In my interactive II class with professor Sue Jenkins we had a Responsive Web Design (RWD) project where we had to completely customize a bootstrap template to showcase a city of our choosing that worked seamlessly for both desktop and mobile.

For this project, I choose Buffalo N.Y. I enjoyed this project for a few reasons. One of the reasons is because it reminded me that although the layout may work for a desktop, it will not always look the same on mobile. Another reason I enjoyed this project is I was reminded that although it may look great on your desktop, you should always test it on a bunch of computers and browsers before presenting the project. When you skip that step things break, so taking that extra time to ensure it works universally can save you a lot of time designing in the long run.

Overall, this project gave me a much needed lesson in patience and perseverance. With this project, we were allowed to use a template that someone else created which provided its own challenge. Just because they designed something a certain way does not mean that is the best solution to the problem. Therefore, you need to go in and change things to make it more aesthetically pleasing or design to increase the UX. More often than not, the simplest design elements are hidden deep within lines of CSS.

Which means that you are going through the code line to find that element that you are trying to enhance. Going line by line ended up teaching me more about the code, and allowed me to alter things that someone who may have just glanced at the code would have skipped. Once I finally found that single line I was looking for I was able to have that little lightbulb moment all designers crave! I must say, this RWD project is my favorite project of my Interactive II class so far.

Stay tuned for upcoming projects, and new posts about my journey as a senior graphic design student!