Not new, but still I need review :)

Hi all!
I subscribed to this community mainly to receive and give-on-request feedback.
In particular, for me (and for now), it’s about my portfolio and how I come across to HR Managers and other designers.
Please, take a look and let me know :slight_smile:
My Resume: http://www.saratraversari.it/Sara_Traversari_resume.pdf
My Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-traversari-0347706/
My Portfolio: www.saratraversari.it

and my Slidedoc with selected projects here: http://www.saratraversari.it/showcase.pdf

  1. pdf or not pdf?
  2. too much? is it too much info? is showing quotes just too much? is showing my picture (a different one) too much?

Thanks!!!

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Hi @saratraverz! Here are my thoughts:

###Resume

  • Isn’t terribly readable - too wordy for scanning.
  • I like the simple, black-and-white design
  • Highlight accomplishments - what did you achieve? What are you proud of?

For what it’s worth, I read your article After a year of UX Design in London a while back and promptly spent the rest of the afternoon dreaming about moving to London for my design career. That’s not practical for me, but I enjoyed the read and learning more about your process at Aqueduct.

###Your LinkedIn

Not much here, other than to say that I’d consider adding job descriptions to your Aqueduct and Fospha entries.

###Your Portfolio

I like the easy, natural motion of the page.

Because the “Selected Projects” portion of the bottom of the homepage autoscrolls, I only saw two entries when I scrolled down at first. It made me think you only had two projects in your portfolio, which was surprising for a person of your experience. Obviously you have much more than that. I’d either cut the auto-scroll, or ensure that each new page of carousel is full.

I’ve never been a fan of the graphs to explain skill levels, which you put in at your “More About Me” section of your homepage. In my opinion, you either know a piece well enough to put it on your skills, or you don’t. Using the graph has always felt a bit apologetic for your skill gaps and lazy in explaining your strengths and weaknesses. I always advise people to be bold and scrap the graphs. It may not look as good, but it makes a better impression on me.

I’m not sure the quote scroller adds much to the site. My eyes skipped it completely the first few times, and when I did notice it, I was more perplexed about it than anything else.

I’d remove the link to your “About” page until you have it ready. I won’t miss the link if it’s not there, and the “Under Construction” page feels very early-web (especially the somewhat perplexing countdown timer).

I’m a bit perplexed why you have a “Write Me” link above your TopNav, a “Contacts” link in you TopNav, and a “Contact Me Now” button in your Hero Image section, all of which accomplish the goal of sending you a message in slightly different ways. At the very least I’d consolidate these so that they all perform the same interaction. Ideally, I’d eliminate the “Write Me” link and have the “Contacts” and “Contact Me Now” buttons both launch the same popover dialog.

Your social network icons are nearly invisible. If this isn’t by design, I’d re-consider their placement.

One piece of advice that I’d give is that your portfolio is perfectly fine, as far as portfolios go, but there’s nothing there that makes it distinctly yours. That portfolio could belong to anyone, anywhere. It doesn’t feel personalized. I’d spend some time thinking about what you can do to make it more clearly your own.


That’s about all I have. I hope that’s helpful! As always, let me know if you have any questions or if I can clarify anything for you further.

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@dougcollins

For what it’s worth, I read your article After a year of UX Design in London a while back and promptly spent the rest of the afternoon dreaming about moving to London for my design career. That’s not practical for me, but I enjoyed the read and learning more about your process at Aqueduct.

:slight_smile: I’m glad you enjoyed.

wow! thank you very much! I really appreciate you took the time to go into this so thoroughly! Thank you.
I’m in the process of redesigning it, but also refining my professional identity. And it’s a bit difficult for me to find an identity, a trait… I’m thinking that it’s how strongly I believe in the process that makes me a little bit different. This and how I bring non-uxers into it as well. But is this strong enough?
so thank you for highlight things that I’ve resoundingly missed and for confirming the others.

Do you have any thoughts on the selected projects in pdf? I was a little bit skeptical, but actually here recruiters asked me for a pdf document where I go deeper into the process of some of my projects, especially the ones I can’t publish.
I like the concept of a slidedoc, but I’m not sure if it’s too much. I’d do a research with real users, but it’s a little bit of a catch22…I’d rather avoid burning my options right away…although my online portfolio and resume might already do this…

Thanks!
Sara

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You’re welcome! I’m glad you found the feedback helpful :slight_smile:

That’s an excellent start. I’d spend some time ideating on that and see where it takes you.

My only feedback on the document itself is that some of the images aren’t hi-res enough to read well (specifically your flows). I’d also ensure that the document design matches your website color palette as well.

As far as whether or not you should include it on your site, I have some serious opinions on embedded PDFs. In general, I don’t think they should be included on websites unless absolutely mission-critical. They lack responsive design, embed and behave differently depending on your browser and installed software, harbor inherent security concerns, and there’s almost always a better, more web-centric way to do things.

That said, I don’t think it’s a bad idea at all to have this document on-hand, available upon request, and updated; I simply wouldn’t use it on your site.

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@dougcollins Thanks! yes, very helpful. When I start to look for another position, I just need this. I wish I started earlier.
I agree with you, a pdf is not suitable for web and this is only hosted there. I see your point on security as well. I didn’t know, now that I know, I’ll use dropbox.

Many thanks,
Sara

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Hi Sara, not to get too deep into the esthetics of the site it seems that you have a lot of experience in UX so I will focus more on your work. Dive deeper into your process by starting with your research analysis experience (user testing, journey mapping, competitive analysis, etc) , show your design process from wireframes to hi-fid mockups or prototypes and wrap up with your implementation process (do you continue testing or take analysis and do you do A/B testing post deployment). Just my two cents.

Here is a portfolio that has some good take aways. http://jedmund.com/

@aeberly_g Thank you very much! I’ll get deeper into the process in the works section.
Do you also have some thoughts on the showcase.pdf (http://www.saratraversari.it/showcases.pdf) and the Resume (http://www.saratraversari.it/Sara_Traversari_resume.pdf)?

That portfolio looks great and straight to the point. Thanks for sharing!

Sara

I am looking to build my own portfolio soon, so I mostly came to check out what “other people” (you in this case) are doing for reference.

So, here’s just some nit-picking.

Portfolio:
-Under ‘Sketching and Prototyping’, “I master Axure, Invision…” is poor grammar. Consider changing to: “I am a master in Azure…”, “I have mastered Azure…”, or “I am mastering Azure…”
-Under ‘My Client is part of the Team and owns the design success’, I thought that having the link on “outperforming” was going to be a well placed self-promotion on your own work. I was confused when I clicked on it and didn’t find your name anywhere.
-I was startled to find another panel of information past the Orange ‘Contact Me’ button under ‘I know my Design will be successful’
-Under ‘More About Me’, the only useful thing I would use out of there is the link to ‘View My Work’. I felt like I had already read all of the information that section had before on this page somewhere.

Suggestion: Create a 2nd Orange button next to ‘Contact Me’ under ‘I know my Design will be successful’ that says ‘View My Work’ and relocate any information you find valuable from ‘More About Me’ to other places

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Found a broken link. On the home page, when you click “view my works first”… nothing happens.

Also, this is a stylistic opinion, but on your works page, the image rotation on mouseover seems … not professional.

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