Portfolio review

Feedback & Problem Solving
#1

Hi,

This is my first post however I am an avid reader of uxmastery.

I’d appreciate if anyone would like to give me feedback on my recent portfolio. I made this for a company and the original is in Keynote format. I made a pdf to reduce file size so unfortunately you won’t be able to view the videos. My plan is to take the content to a website format. I’d really like some feedback before I do this however.

You can download the pdf from the link.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/105385011/James%20Mole%20McConnell%20presentation.pdf

Thx!

#2

Welcome James!

Looking through your portfolio I have some more general feedback and a few nit picky things, again as this is very subjective feedback, please take it with a grain of salt.

Just two errors that I could find:

  • pg 19 “From one of my many books I could the Elito method” - could seems to be the wrong word choice
  • pg 32 “Due to the work we done GSMA has” - should be a have between [B]we[/B] and [B]done[/B]

I liked how you have things that you learned in these projects (in the overviews), i’d like to see more around problems that you came up against and how you overcame them.
You have a good mix of sketches and higher fidelity, and I like that we can follow along in your process quite clearly for each project.

Two personal preference things:

  • I feel it is good to get across your personality, and how people who have worked with you view you, but I would leave it at the references. To me the wall of post-it notes etc is a little much, when we got the good feedback from those who have worked with you and your personality that comes through in your writing and process.
  • Your portfolio is quite large. Although it gives a very thorough understanding, I’m not sure potential employers will want to look through the whole thing, but I’m not sure about this one.
  • I feel that as part of it being quite large, it is also quite busy in terms of the layout and maybe this could be simplified a little bit more.

It would be really interesting to hear your story, so if you do have time it would be great if you could put it up! :slight_smile:

#3

Hey James,
Wow, that truly blew me away! What an amazing piece of work.

I’m a bit torn. I really enjoyed reading the whole thing, and I feel like I know you now. It made me smile and it most definitely demonstrates your experience. What I’m not so sure about is who you’re pitching it at. I wonder if perhaps you need an abridged version (just 1 page about you, and then all the pages that involve your projects) to give out a the start, and then perhaps use the extended version as you get further through an interview process. Otherwise I think it might be a bit overwhelming. Or perhaps another approach might be to put the project stuff first.

What I was really impressed with was the level of detail that you go into with the projects. Your thinking and processes are really clearly demonstrated, which not many people do especially well in portfolios.

I hope that helps.

#4

Wow thank you both. To give some background i made this presentation for a company that approached me and this is a combo of what they asked for and what I saw they needed. To do this also helped me to reflect on who I am, where I have been and where I want to go. It felt great afterwards. As i said, I now would like to take most it over to my personal website which of course will not be a linear experience like this one. In the keynote version the I did link the projects from the contents page so they could be quickly jumped to if needed.

i’m typing with one hand here due to a shoulder injury so excuse any errors!

Natalie - all your remarks are appreciated so no salt required. I agree that some focus on complex problems and how i solved them would be good. thx for pointing out the text errors - dammit!
The references are from linkedin and perhaps they have seen them before and these are perhaps not always seen as genuine… the post-its are unmistakably genuine and that’s why they are there.

I’m thinking of using squarespace to revamp my out of date website. i don’t want to relearn wordpress! www.mole.se

thx again.