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Site Feedback: Personal Portfolio

almost 6 years ago from , Web Programmer and IXD

Hello DesignerNews! This is my first post here, so I'm hoping I've marked it correctly.

I'm a designer who codes (or a developer who designs? I can't even tell anymore) and I've just launched the first draft of my first personal portfolio site in a while (longer than I'd like to admit!) and was hoping to get some feedback on it.

One thing I already know is that I would like to (when I have time) to beef up some of the projects to make them more like case studies (I have some of the original wireframes, project brief info, "results" so to speak, etc).

Any feedback would be great though!

4 comments

  • Cody Reeves, almost 6 years ago

    So a few comments:

    1. Typography - I really think you should relook at how you are current sizes/line height and possibly refine. IMO it looks like you sorta threw that your typography together without thought. The about section really stood out to me the most, small text white on a black background is always really hard to read, makes me not want to read it :/ TBH I never like text on black backgrounds.

    2. Watch out how you use vwvh I see you use those units quite heavily in your CSS, IMO these units should always have a fallback and be adjusted for mobile & tablet. I have also had issues in the past with these units when considering browsers, some use these units differently especially between desktop & mobile.

    3. The menu - 1. on mobile make the animation quicker - I thought the menu was broken initially since the animation took so long. 2. If your going to have a dropdown add a icon or something to it to indicate. 4. On desktop for a UX side of things I had no idea the links where links. they look exactly the same as everything else. 3. The 1,2,3 links on the page are handy but I had no idea what they were for until interacted with.

    4. Your case studies on home page - They are really dark and small. Id say you have about 10 seconds or less to grab the attention of your user before they bounce, IMO the case studies I just scrolled right by, They really don't catch the eye at all when you are hiding them behind text & a dark overlay. I would recommend taking another look at them and make them 'pop' a bit more. Make me want to click them lol.

    5. The 'Design' & 'Code' links along the edge of the screen, I had no idea theses were clickable. IMO no user will interact with these, very unknown/can be looked passed very easily, especially if they are just scrolling though.

    Other notes:

    • Relook at your sites SEO & meta tags, make sure you are using your heading tags correctly, I saw you have 8 h1 tags on your home page.

    • Combine your JS & minify! Why not reduce the amount of your requests? Also don't load JS in the head unless you really need to can hurt performance.

    • Grab a free account on hotjar and set up some tracking, it records visitors & has a pretty cool feedback tool. I find watching users can give you some great insight's on how to improve.

    Ok I think that is for now! Hopefully that helps. Let me know if you have any questions!

    2 points
    • Chris Wiggs, almost 6 years ago

      Thank you for such in depth feedback! The fact you checked the desktop and mobile AND the code is really great — I appreciate it! Although you totally caught me on some of this; haven't got to optimizing or anything yet, so well noted.

      Very helpful!

      0 points
  • Andrew-David JahchanAndrew-David Jahchan, almost 6 years ago

    Loving that slider at the start! Pretty unique-looking portfolio, good job :)

    Although, if I were to change one thing, it would be the look of those slide-in "Design" and "Code" sections. Nothing else on the side uses depth and shadows that way, so I think those sliding panels should just be flat colours without that edge shadow.

    Oh, also, the "Work" and "About" links sometimes appear at the very bottom of the page when you're viewing a project and they don't seem to work.

    1 point
    • Chris Wiggs, almost 6 years ago

      You're totally right on those side panels. Seemed like a good idea in wireframing it, but they totally get lost/are out of context. I'll have to find a better way to handle this stuff.

      Thank you for the notes!

      0 points