Yet another portfolio feedback thread - sndstrm.se

I would love some feedback on my portfolio: sndstrm.se

I’ve opted for transparency and candidness in how I see the intended readers and potential employers, and how I view my career and ambitions, but I am also quite comfortable and can afford to be picky. I am just a bit worried it comes of as to cocky.

Another concern is that I am trying to cater to clients and employers with the same content and not keeping focus, which I feel is not optimal, but I find it hard to pick one target audience over another. Do you think it comes across as sprawling?

I would also like to know what you think about using the portfolio itself as a case study?

Hey, I’m Marco - I recently finished my communication design degree, so I might not be the best-trusted portfolio reviewer. But at least I got a few application interviews until now.

Your portfolio is huge. It’s bloated with text that sometimes is appearing somewhere else. I would really like to see more pictures than headers and body copy. Maybe replace some text with graphics. Like your however and but-lists, it would be really great to see some icons at least.

Show don’t tell, images would be perfect, I’d love to see you work on your home improvement to be honest. It’s weird to say this from my perspective, since I also don’t have too many pictures, but I really want to see them. “I do not make things look beautiful, I make them useful.” - also a good header to support with a graphic or picture of some process artifacts.

Web design/ design in general, your career timeline is really cool, but it’s visually confusing since the text doesn’t align to a grid, makes me almost angry. The two column layout also doesn’t work for me, since I am reading it on a scrollable website and those two columns get into my view at the same time. That makes me read it in the wrong order, destroying your planned information architecture.

That’s my feedback, thanks for letting me see your portfolio :eye: :eye:

All right, thank you for your feedback. Interaction design and visual design are not my strengths but I’ll try to justify some of the design decisions you have issues with.

Text mass is always an issue, and I am not an information designer, but I try to be concise, and I cannot see how the information presented can be replaced by graphics. I think images and graphics can support the current content and make it less text heavy but I feel this would only make for more content, and more bloatedness.

The current case study is exhaustive, and is intended as in-depth reading on my process rather than as a result showcase. If I were able to create more case studies, and ones less exhaustive then the current one, I might be able to scale down text in other places, but I simply do not have a lot of projects for which I can write these articles.

The ‘more about me’ list is one of the things i do not love as it is right now. I agree that adding images to personal statements such as home improvement, can make it more relatable but I find it hard to see how I can consistlenty present these statements without adding stock-footage-esque images.

Key statements are made more than once, but really his only regards to my brand statement: “I design digital services to solve problems which I’ve helped define, for users I’ve gotten to know, and for businesses I’ve come to understand”. This is beacuse I intend for the profile page to deliver on it’s own, and not depend on the landing page.

Columns can be precarious but at no point do I use columns to present information that is order-dependent. I do no break content into columns. And while many studies show that reading speed can be negatively affected by left-justified columns, it can have other effects on comprehension.

The career timeline is not intended to be read as a table, but rather as a sequence of entries. The elements do not align to a grid because not all entries have the same number of attributes (location/title), and some attributes need to linebreak. I would not say that the the alternative as shown below is better.

>> career timeline
I think it’s much better. If you want to bring focus to your tasks, just use a bulleted list. Since it’s in table form withing a grid, most people will read it tabular.

>> columns
People might not be used to it. To me, it feels rather confusing, but I see it from my surrounding media sites. Information transmission should be concise. I think it’s risky to play around with that, especially if you’re looking for a job in UX.

>> Text mass
Don’t tell me you couldn’t cut down:
“In my process, I put a lot of focus on leveraging the stakeholders’ business problems with the business problems of the users of their service, and my work tends to spill over into business development since a digital service is just one part of the total experience of a brand.”

to

“In my process, I focus on leveraging business difficulties of both stakeholders and the users of their service alike. Since digital services are one part of the total brand experience, my work reaches into business development as well.”

Almost 1/5 text saved. Imagine your next employer to be happy to have more time for random office stuff while still getting all the information. You can use a tool to check for sentences that are too long as well. That one was very long.


Did you already get feedback from employers? Don’t forget to ask for feedback right at the first interview! Maybe what they didn’t really understand or where they have been confused.

Anyways, what I say is to be taken with a grain of salt. I am not successfully employed right now, so I can only give critique from my point of view.
Thanks for reading.

You’re right. The text could certainly be shortened. I do not mean to be overly defensive, your feedback is valid.

When it comes to the career timeline it could be bulleted but I feel the different weight and case of the text differentiate the content.

I did get some feedback during my last interview, and a job as well :slight_smile: as UX lead at HiQ, a major consultant company in Sweden which I have been curious about for some time, and since I feel like I’m done freelancing at the moment it felt just right. They were particulary intrigued by the way I present my profile. But one employer is not a big enough sample for a study so I can’t say it is perfect.

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That’s neat!
Did they tell you what intrigued them the most and what they had seen as unnecessary?
I am still amazed on what worked in my portfolio and what didn’t, so I’d like to have more insight into the whole process.

As I understood it they felt that it was honest and transparent, and since I was applying for a senior role they appreciated that I could articulate my ambitions and what I want to do. The creative director said he had struggled with getting the current team to work with the kind of self-assessments I’ve made.

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Okay, I’ll see if I can learn something out of that information that helps me land an entry-level position.
Thanks for your correspondence.

I would think that for an entry-level job it is harder to be picky and strict about what you want to do, and one might need to work more cross-disciplinary with UI, graphic design, project management, content management etc., before developing an edge.

But I would still think employers appreciate being frank and thoughtful about ones long-term ambitions. What would you like to get out of your first job, and what specific skills do you want to develop?

I’m entirely confused about the whole process right now. Especially through the amount of confusing UX/UI openings that seem to be looking for unicorns. I landed an interview for an UX engineer position one month ago. A document of a recent side project, detailing how I went through the process until then, was enough it seems. I’ll look into that document again for sure.

To be honest, I really just want a well paid job with no red flag employer right now, everything else should fall in place. I’m flexible, and I see every task as valuable to do.

I feel that coming from requirements engineering heavy IT studies, I am still a diagram buff and would love to use that to grow in the entire user flow process. Qualitative and quantitative analysis is also something I’d like to go back into again, since I’ve been working in market research for a time. Also love doing UI.

I do not know it it helps, but I have never had employer without any red flags :slight_smile:

I have a background in requirements as well, something that has been useful in communication and facilitating with developers, and I was able to gradually transition to service design and later user centric service design.

Better texts would be needed to make the page appear in search results. If you are looking for clients, be sure to delete this sentence: “I am currently employed full time…”. This is very discouraging for customers.

@Sandstrand mentioned that they are already employed. It might be more discouraging to not say that in the intro, giving false hopes to clients.

And yes, the long sentences might be bad indicators for SEO if good SEO is a requirement.

Since I published this portfolio and initially published this post I have been employed and am no longer willing or able to take on more work so right now I’d rather not generate traffic and, as @Marco_Renner says, give false hope and waste anybody’s time. But I do still want the portfolio published, just not with the purpose of getting me job, right now.