Paws and Hearts: From Theory to Practice
- Jul 29, 2025
- 9 min read
Updated: Oct 19, 2025
July 27th, 2025
Creating a digital project of my own has been incredibly rewarding, particularly because it allowed me to explore a topic that has interested me for years: the role of animal companions in supporting mental health. After losing a close family member around Christmas several years ago, I was gifted my first pet, a sweet little black kitten. I never could have imagined how much becoming a pet owner would help me through the grieving process and allow me to feel like myself again. In only 3 years, my cat has had a profound impact on my life, and I’ve often shared these sentiments with close family and friends.
When I enrolled in the CTS3030 Intro to Minimal Web Design with Jekyll workshop knowing that I'd get the opportunity to create a website of my own, I already had a clear vision in mind. I wanted to create a digital space where pet owners like myself could share stories about how their pets have positively influenced their lives. The website name, Paws and Hearts, was created almost on the spot to represent the way our animal friends touch our hearts in special ways.
It was important to ensure that this project held academic value in addition to personal significance. Research has shown that interacting with pets can reduce symptoms of mental health conditions and is linked to positive affect, an indicator of emotional well-being. With this in mind, I felt confident in moving forward with the concept.
Workshop Week: Moments of Doubt
I knew that embarking on a journey to create a static website would be far from easy. especially since my only programming experience came from a single introductory course I had taken in university (in which I survived purely on sheer panic.) After the first day of the workshop, I have to admit that I lacked confidence in my ability to succeed. HTML and CSS felt like trying to read a book in a foreign language, and even though the site was not meant to be built entirely from scratch, small changes such as adjusting the background colour of my chosen template left me sighing in frustration at my laptop. I started to question what a programming novice like me, was doing in a room filled with more experienced students and working professionals.
In that moment of self-doubt, I made a promise to myself. I would build a strong and polished static website. I would bring every creative vision I had to life, even if it meant spending long hours at my desk.
Research Process:
After learning about platform capitalism in CTS3000 last semester, and later revisiting the topic in the theory component of my workshop, I became inspired to use this project as a realistic form of data activism. Until this point, I had only used website generators like WIX to showcase my academic work. The idea of creating and hosting my own digital space independently felt both empowering and liberating. With this in mind, I wanted Paws and Hearts to be a reflection of my creative style as well as a scholarly pursuit. I am passionate about graphic design, so I aimed to design the site in a way that represented my aesthetic, which often includes cute animal vector art and a palette of pink tones (as you can see from the rest of my blog.)
I felt inspired by the UX design concepts discussed in the workshop, especially colour theory and how colours can evoke emotion. I took some time to reflect on the kind of feelings I wanted visitors to experience when viewing my website. Since the project explores potentially sensitive topics such as mental well-being, I wanted the visuals to be calm and easy on the eyes. After doing some research, I decided to use a pastel colour palette. Pastel colours are visually soothing due to their low saturation, and their soft, calming effect helps reinforce the emotional tone of the project.
With the colour scheme and art style decided, the next step was figuring out how to present the website. Given my background in graphic design, it was tempting to center the entire project around visuals and a variety of expressive fonts. However, it was important to apply design science and UX principles to ensure the site would be easy and enjoyable to navigate. For instance, I tried to make clarity and simplicity key goals in the design process. The website is meant to be simple yet impactful, with just three main sections: About, Testimonials, and Submissions. Lastly, I used only two typefaces: Montserrat for titles and Helvetica Neue for body text. Too many fonts can create visual noise, which may be overwhelming, so keeping the typography consistent supports a clean and user-friendly design.
Art/Design:
I decided to create a 3x2 species grid, featuring six common pets, which also served as a great opportunity to incorporate the pastel colour scheme discussed in the previous section. I wanted Paws and Hearts to welcome a diverse range of pet owners, not just those with cats and dogs, so including a wider selection of species felt like the right decision.
For each visual in the grid, I initially used cartoon animal clipart from Canva. However, after receiving feedback from a classmate who suggested it would be more meaningful to create original artwork for the project, I decided to do exactly that. I occasionally dabble in digital art using FireAlpaca, a free/open source paint tool, so I used that platform to create each and every drawing from scratch. Although the illustrations were not overly complex, they still took time to complete, typically ranging from two to four hours each. Afterward, I made additional edits in Canva, to turn them into stickers. The banner image took even longer, about 10 hours total.
Something that did not cross my mind initially was the importance of copyrighting my own work. I had spent hours creating these illustrations and needed to make sure there were clear permissions for others to use, adapt, or distribute them. To address this, I created a Pinterest profile to house all of the artwork featured in my project and applied a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to each image. This license is the least restrictive and only requires attribution to me in the odd chance that someone decides to reuse or adapt my work. By linking the license to my Pinterest profile, users can click through to view all of my artwork in one convenient place.
Data Collection & Ethics:
One of the simplest and most organized ways to create a dataset, based on my experience, is through a survey. I needed a fair amount of information from participants, so I created a Google Form and did my best to design questions that gathered everything I needed without asking for anything unnecessary. These questions included the participant’s name, their pet’s name, a testimonial, and consent to display their submission when the website is uploaded to this blog. There was a lapse in judgment when I asked for the specific breed of each pet, which turned out to be unnecessary, as the website only uses broad classification categories like dog, cat, and bird in the species grid. In the future, I will be more mindful about collecting only the information that directly supports the goals of the project.
Aside from that misstep, I believe the rest of the survey was well thought out and placed a strong emphasis on privacy. I chose to ask only for first names, and participants could omit this entirely if they were uncomfortable sharing personal information online. Because Paws and Hearts addresses mental health, a topic that can bring up different levels of sensitivity, I made it clear that it was perfectly acceptable for participants to remain anonymous. I addressed these concerns by providing options that prioritized their comfort while still maintaining authenticity. For example, I encouraged participants to speak about general well-being rather than mental health if that felt more comfortable, which appears to be the approach that most participants chose to take.
Some feedback provided by the course instructor was to consider who holds ownership of the pet photos submitted through the Google Form. In response, I decided to include a notice under the testimonials section stating that all photo submissions remain the property of their original owners and are used in my project with permission.
Programming:
The programming aspect is where most of the work took place. I downloaded my Jekyll template early in the workshop and uploaded it into Visual Studio Code, so my workspace for the semester was ready to go. After learning what HTML and CSS are responsible for during the theory component, I felt ready to begin slowly customizing the template I had selected. To avoid overwhelming myself, I worked on the site a little each day, usually for about an hour, so that I would not leave everything until the last minute.
I spent most of June focusing on the visual design and overall appearance of the site, which meant that a large portion of the coding happened in the main CSS file. This is where I changed the background colours for the different sections of the site, using white and various shades of pink. After pasting all the necessary text content into the appropriate HTML files, which I completed earlier in the course, I used the CSS file to adjust the font colours as well. The most challenging part was navigating the template and figuring out exactly where each change needed to be made. Throughout the process, I regularly made inline comments using the proper syntax in both the HTML and CSS files. These comments helped document the changes I made to the template and explain what each part of my version of the code was doing.
Things were progressing quickly. I had received a good number of submissions, but there was one problem: I could not figure out how to add multiple entries into each species category. Adding one entry in each project markdown file was simple because the template was designed to accommodate a single image and piece of text. However, I had multiple entries for both the dog and cat categories. After countless attempts and hours of researching, I gave up on the species grid entirely. Instead, I created individual project markdown files for each entry. This meant that visitors would need to click through sixteen separate testimonials, rather than exploring them within grouped categories.
For a while, I was content to leave the project in that (unfortunate) state I could not figure out how to execute a Liquid loop in the template that would allow multiple entries to be displayed in a single markdown file, so I simply gave up. It was not until my course instructor encouraged me to revisit my original vision and improve the disorganized layout that I decided to give it another try. I consulted several resources on how to use Liquid to process content from multiple entries, and after several days of trial and error, I finally figured out the code. I created an array in each markdown file and pasted all the submission metadata for the corresponding category. Then, in the HTML file for the testimonials section (not the individual pages), I inserted a loop that processes each image listed in the front matter. For every image listed, the loop outputs the image, its caption, and the submitter’s name (if provided), all inside a styled block.
After figuring this out, I was able to code in all my entries as planned (with an additional four later on), which gave me most of July to focus on all of the artwork for the site. From there, I made minor programming adjustments as needed, and although it involved many long hours at my desk, the process went smoothly from that point on.
Creating Paws and Hearts has been an incredible experience. I challenged myself in ways I never had before, and I am truly proud of the results. This project is not only a manifestation of my passion for creating but also a reflection of the knowledge and skills I am continuing to develop through my digital humanities education. The Culture and Technology Studies program emphasizes that information is not simply delivered but created, I experienced that firsthand by designing my own dataset and breathing life into it through an interactive digital space.
Additional Works Cited
Grammarly. (n.d.). Grammarly. https://www.grammarly.com
Keating, M., Rubenis, N., Carson, S., & Terhell, A. (2024). The Pet Project: People, pets & art. University of Tasmania. https://www.the-petproject.com/about-1
Pilsch, A. (2024). Locating the minimal in minimal computing pedagogy: Minimal computing tools and the classroom management of student composing workflows. Journal of Educational Media: The Journal of the Educational Television Association, 49(5), 769–779. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2024.2401822
Tuniewicz, M. (2025). Paws and Hearts: Methodological analysis [Unpublished manuscript]. University of Guelph.
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