Interviewing user was a very helpful user research methodology to gain insights about how I should design the online portfolio and what elements should be displayed on the website. During my user interview, I asked user’s basic information to gain a better understanding of the user.I also asked what features should online portfolio have, expectation from the user and finally any concerns regarding using the online portfolio to design a appropriate the website.
View the user interviewsI have conducted a competitor analysis on multiple websites to gain a better understanding of the competitors and seek any useful information that can be incorporated into my online portfolio. I have checked three three online portfolio websites and one product website as my indirect competitor. Three online portfolio websites was analyzed to gain a better understanding of how other portfolio websites are designed and what elements those website included for their visitors. A product website was analyzed to have a better understanding of how the product was advertised on the website and what kind of information was presented in what form of content.
View the competitor analysisFeature value matrix is a technique that gives designers the ability to prioritize potential feature in your product, to reduce ‘my favorite feature bias’ from development, and to lay out a product roadmap and how it can balance the market requirements with realistic development. I have selected contact by email, Navigation menu feature, resume, projects pages, bio, gallery, social media links and responsive design. Selected features were the most important features to design and develop an online portfolio based on my user interview, and competitors analysis.
View the future value matrixI have prioritized my online portfolio features based on the importance of exposing myself to visitors and designing a smooth navigation user experience. I have selected resume, projects pages, bio, email contact, gallery and social media features to provide a detail information about myself, interests, and lifestyle to visitors. E-mail contact feature is also presented on the website for further contact opportunity from visitors. Navigation menu including home button elements is designed to provide smooth website navigation user experience.
View the feature prioritizationI have created my user stories based on the using the website and finding a proper functionality to perform on the online portfolio. I have focused on navigating and finding information on the online portfolio from a hiring manager’s perspective. I believe that creating user stories provide me an opportunity to see what kind gaps or misconception I had as a website designer. Especially, through user stories have found out that some elements on my online portfolio were not properly displayed or hard to perform targeted task.
View the user storiesA cognitive walkthrough is an inspection method for evaluating the design of a user interface, with special attention to how well the interface supports exploratory learning. The evaluation is done by having a group of evaluators go step-by-step through commonly used tasks. It can be performed by evaluators in the early stage of design, before performance testing is possible. Performing cognitive walkthrough can reveal any design bias that designer created by talking to potential users and asking questions on website and its elements. Since the method is conducted in a fair early stage in a development, it also helps to capture any missing elements on the website.
View the cognitive walkthroughI have conducted a click test and question test for my user testing on usabilityhub.com. I have chose click test to analyze where users will click on my online portfolio website and why they click there. For question test, I have asked users where they can find my information such as experiences and skills to have a better understanding where and how users will find them since those two elements two of the most important elements for the online portfolio website. Two test results are accessible through below links.
View the first "Click test" user test resultThrough a various user research and user testing to developing an end product, I have learned that following proper processes to build a user center and friendly is inevitable. In the beginning of this project, I, as a designer, thought that I can design and create a best online portfolio website since I had many good ideas and contents that I wanted to incorporate to my online portfolio. Based on my solid user experience, as a website visitor, I have assumed that what I will like to see and have in the website will be the similar things my website visitors will want yet I was fairly far off without any proper user research.
While I was conducting user research, I have found how I can tailor my online portfolio features to a proper visitors, what kind of information will visitors seek in the online portfolio website, and general understanding of the users.
User testing was helpful to have a better understanding of user behaviors. Conducting click test help me out to understand why users click on particular areas or elements on the website and by asking why they click those things on the website, it provide me a better design layout and contents display for the future users.
After conducting user research and user testing, I have found that couple of important elements were missing in my online portfolio website. Especially, after conducting user testing with a first prototype of my website such as cognitive walkthrough and user task based testing helped me to reveal design implementation guidelines.
Creating a smooth navigation for the website was one of the most important elements and findings during the process of designing and developing the website. On my initial prototype website navigation menu bar disappeared as the users scrolled down the pages. To visit other pages, users had to find the navigation menu on the top of the website. In my final design, I have implemented this issue with making a static navigation bar at the top of the screen that stays as users scrolls down the pages. In doing so, the online portfolio website navigation process became much for intuitive and user friendly.
Another important finding was designing creating the right layout for the purpose of the website. Especially for portfolio website, I found out that designing a right layout to obtain a necessary information on the website was very important for the users and their user experience. Since the purpose of the website is to advertise myself and provide a right about of information to visitors who might not have a lot of time to navigate through my online portfolio, I have redesigned my website to one page portfolio from initial multi-page website. After the layout change, I reconducted the user testing and had positive responses from the users stating that one page layout design provides them a better visual layout to find the wanted information easily and quickly.
Developing a responsive design website was the most challenging part for this project. Unfortunately, for my final enhanced online portfolio, I could not complete the responsive design feature due to its complexity and lack of time. I was planning to learn bootstrap for the responsive design feature yet to understand responsive design, I wanted to develop from a scratch and also experience how responsive design works. During my winter break, I am going to complete the responsive design feature and update the online portfolio to make it responsive.