This is my first blog post about my Senior Design project! I've made both a tag and a category called "Senior Design" so it'll be easier to track. I've started off on three different aspects of my project:

1. Historical Research. I've begun researching the women that I was planning on including in my project and started to narrow down my list, as well as get an idea of what aspects of their careers I'm going to include in my website. Right now my list includes: Hypatia (of Ancient Alexandria), Ada Lovelace, Hedy Lamarr, Joan Clarke, Grace Hopper, and Evelyn Boyd Granville. I was originally planning on including Sophie Germain, but having begun to research her I've realized that her contributions to mathematics, while significant, were not as relevant to the field of computer science as I would like.

2. Coding. I've started researching expressjs and managed to create a very basic express app that runs locally. I'm currently in the process of incorporating ejs templates so I can have dynamic content in my app. I'm in an ongoing process of making my laptop ready for efficient web development. I ran into some problems with my node version, but I managed to install the correct version using homebrew.

3. Art. I've begun sketching and storyboarding. Mostly I've been brainstorming and testing out different styles for the characters. I want young girls (my target audience) to be able to relate to the women in my project, so I'm planning on depicting them as children, but dressed as they would be as when they were working on their various academics pursuits. I've been playing around with different levels of realism/stylization and humor. I'm meeting with my advisor tomorrow to get her artistic feedback. Once I choose the aesthetic for my characters, I'm going to use that as inspiration for the environment that they inhabit.

Some Ada Lovelace character sketches. I'm a huge fan of her famous crazy buns, so I'm hoping to keep those in my final design.