Everfi is an education technology company that delivers digital learning programs on financial literacy, health, and career readiness topics, primarily to K-12 and higher education institutions. The project involved developing a front-end prototype for a financial education program, completed while consulting with Tenthwave, a New York-based digital agency managing the Everfi account.
Prototypes serve a different function than production builds — the goal is to demonstrate how an application will look and behave to stakeholders, test interaction patterns, and validate design decisions before committing to full development. Building a convincing prototype requires functional front-end implementation while not necessarily connecting to a working back end.
The prototype was constructed using flat HTML5, relying on the semantic structure and new input types introduced in HTML5 to present form elements and content in a clean, modern format. CSS3 features were used throughout, including visual treatments like pointed or angled button shapes and gradient fills — styling approaches that took advantage of CSS3's expanded visual capabilities relative to what CSS2 supported.
Several jQuery components were developed for the prototype, including animation sequences for transitions between learning modules, client-side form validation for the educational exercises, and a spinning gearwheel effect that served as a visual metaphor for the financial education content. Client-side animation and validation in a prototype context demonstrates the intended interactive behavior to stakeholders without requiring a production-ready implementation on the back end.
