Personal
Portfolio
(Research and Design Project)
The goal of this project was to create a place where all of my projects can be collected so they may be viewed by future employers.
If this website was not created then I would just be a person in the crowd or just a name on a page with the title of UX Designer with nothing to back these claims up.
The Goal:
It is difficult to begin a major project without first doing the proper research. I went into this endeavor with no knowledge of what should be in a proper portfolio page.
Because of time restraints, I could not conduct interviews, so I scoured the internet for individuals who had put in the time to investigate this problem.
I found several resources from actual hiring managers who went through many portfolios and spoke about what was good and not so good in each of them.
The following is a photographic view of what I discovered.
Research:
Affinity Diagram
How Might We...
How might we create an interaction that captures
what an employer is looking for?
Ideate:
After organizing my findings I had to figure out how to incorporate what I found to
be important parts of a portfolio. I also had to work out a way to make my portfolio
stand out from all of the simple white-walled websites on the internet.
Wire Frames:
Mid-Fy
High-Fy
Once I had an idea of what I wanted the website to look like I then made mid-fidelity
wire frames. This was done to start digitizing my ideas while also checking to see if
they are realistic in scope.
After I successfully brought my vision into the digital space (while keeping UX Laws
in mind) it was then time to create a high-fidelity version of my project.
I have come a long way from knowing nothing about portfolios. I learned that there is more to this page
about me than how pretty the pictures are.
One must consider their audience and how they want to be viewed. I desire to be seen as a team player, so
I made sure to use inclusive language. I wanted to be seen as different and not as someone who made
another black-and-white site.
I also learned how tedious of a process it is. The amount of time required to create even a simple website
design is immense.
There are many things I could have done differently and only time and further testing will tell me when I
need to redesign certain parts or even the entirety of my portfolio website.
As I said before, no one is perfect, and I am no exception to that rule. I put in as much effort as possible
in the time allotted and I will continue to labor over this important website.
Retrospective:
Feedback:
Finished Product
No one is perfect, so in the spirit of keeping this in mind, I went to several other people
to get their thoughts on what I had created.
The overall conclusion was good, but a few things needed to be added, subtracted
and tweaked.
