Harvard Computer Society
The Harvard Computer Society has brought students together around computing since 1983. When this semester started, its website was gone: the old one had been taken down over a vulnerability. So we made a new one, and I built it.
Below are the details I spent the most time on.
HCS, in its own photos
The three letters on the homepage are windows onto the society's events. Each letter cycles through its own photos on its own schedule, so the word never changes all at once.
A photo that turns into code
Behind the letters, a photo of the engineering building is redrawn in code characters. Patches drift across it and decode, and your pointer decodes whatever it passes over. I kept tuning it until the sky and the title stayed clear.
What HCS does, in one sentence
The homepage says what the society does in a single sentence. Its sponsors and student groups sit inside it as small stacks of logos, and each click slides in the next few.
Recent events
Photos from recent events drift across the page and stop when you point at one. On a phone, the strip becomes something you swipe through instead.
Who came before
Steve Ballmer visited in 1993, and a talk Paul Graham gave the society in 2005 led to Y Combinator. I found these stories in the old sites and The Crimson's archives, and gave them a place on the homepage.
Seven groups under one roof
HCS is home to seven student groups, from the AI society to the programming contest team. Their page links out to each one, and below them sit the society's past projects, like Datamatch.
Before
This is what hcs.harvard.edu showed at the start of the semester, on every page.