I would love some feedback on my new portfolio!

Feedback & Problem Solving
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#1

Hi everyone,

I recently overhauled my portfolio website after having lost everything that was on my past one. I would be very appreciative if you could review it. Here it is:

Geoff Parker - UX / UI Design

I was laid off on April 4th from my first UX job, and I’m trying my best to get another job. There are only two projects on my portfolio as of now, but I’m thinking of how I can add a third… I have a project in mind, and the finished design, but not much research or documented design evolution behind it, because that was on my company’s computer.)

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#2

Hey Geoff,
Welcome back. I’ve taken a look and here is some feedback:

  • First impression is great. The design is clean and pretty accessible. Your projects are well summarised on the home page.
  • I then went to your About page and it was a bit jarring. The font is tiny and much of the information is extraneous. I’d limit that page to just your resume and contact info.
  • The font is also tiny in your case studies and some of the spacing is off.
  • I love the way you transparently explain the difficulties and challenges.
  • The balance of written content to imagery is pretty good but again there is extraneous info – e.g. you don’t really need to include the names of the people you got input from (also you have a type in iNput on case study 1)
  • Overall you’ve done an excellent job of writing up your case studies – one of the best I’ve seen :slight_smile:
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#3

Yeah I’ll second Hawk. It looks super clean, well laid out.
I’ll probably take some cues from yours tbh.

I do like 18px fonts though like I’m reading a childrens book. I like big letters.

I really like that you have a video going through the prototype. Only in a few projects did I incorporate animated gifs of the prototypes.

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#4

Thank you both very much! I think that, in a way, it was a good thing that I had to remake my portfolio from scratch, because I made it with a better understanding of UX and visual design. And thank you for the constructive feedback. I’ll work on fixing that.

Some questions:

  • Should I get rid of the Contact page? I find it a little awkward that I have the exact same contact form at the end of every one of my other pages. It just seems a bit repetitive, but I do like the ability for employers to have easy access to that contact form at the end of every page. I want it to be like “Okay, I read this case study, how do I get in contact with this person… oh, never mind, here’s the form right here!”. It reduces the need to click elsewhere.

On the About page, I feel like if I get rid of that honeycomb graphic and the short paragraphs below explaining why UX is my calling, I won’t be giving enough content to tell anything, well, about myself. I won’t be giving any insight as to who I am and why UX and I are two peas in a pod. I do agree that the Resume is more important in information hierarchy. What if I just moved it to the top?

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#5

Your portfolio looks great! Could you add a couple more case studies, perhaps concept projects? The case studies listing page makes you look a little green—I’ve had that problem and it was solved by just adding some concept work.

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#6

Thanks Rei!

I was considering an Exercises page, separate from the Projects page. These would be small things like a Sign Up page, or other little UI exercises. I got this idea from the Daily UI challenges. Is this what you mean by concept projects?

And if start writing UX/UI articles, maybe I’ll have an Articles page as well, linking out to Medium articles.

#7

I would. I’d have one contact form with an anchor that all contact links land on.

We always think it’s important to say this stuff but TBH employers don’t actually care about it. They want to scan your projects and make a snap judgement based on your work. If they like what they see they’ll interview you, which is when you get to be you and demonstrate what you’re like. In a portfolio it just looks like slightly tacky marketing.

#8

Overall, I think it’s solid. Really like the explanations in the projects section. I like the color palette and logo. To just take it one step further, from a purely graphic/visual design standpoint, I’d re-think your personal photos. The main header image, you appear disengaged, and it’s obvious you clipped out yourself, but didn’t do a clean job. Then on the about me page, you applied some filter that’s not purposeful and doesn’t match the rest of the branding and aesthetic of the site (your image is already at the bottom, so you could just pull this top image completely). The “nice to meet you” image is probably the best, but looks a tad blurry… so if you have a higher res of this, or can sharpen it a bit in Photoshop… you might also want to crop it in a tiny bit tighter. Also, I’d agree the contact page isn’t necessary since it’s at the bottom of all of the pages. Hope this helps!

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