Portfolio
What?
A personal collection of projects that I have completed during my years at Univeristy of California, Irvine.
Who?
This was an individual endeavor. I created everything here on my own.
Why?
Showcase my skills learned from school courses and personal projects.
Learn how to build a website that is well designed.
Two sketches of early ideas for how to display projects.
Challenges
The first challenge I was faced with when creating my portfolio was what did I want visitors to learn about me?
The way I presented my projects and who I am, would change how people would interpret my skills and value as a part of their team.
So now I had to find what I wanted to showcase on my portfolio and how I would design the website to showcase what is important.
I wanted something that was aesthetically pleasing, but more importantly, told visitors:
"I know how to create a great User Experience."
The second challenge was that I just didn't know how to create a website from the bottom up with no templates.
This was a huge task when I first started and I had no idea where to begin. I had very basic knowledge of HTML and CSS
but I knew that these wouldn't be enough.
Two sketches of early ideas for how to display projects. Overlay method (Left) was orginal, but was replaced with dedicated pages (Right).
Solutions
To address the question of what I wanted to say in a way that would lead to a positive user experience,
I began to compile my projects and listed out what challenges I faced and how I overcame them.
Ideally I could explain how this made me a better UX Researcher, and show what skills I gained when completing the
projects. For example, for my fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, I was able to create a website that would log potential members.
With that I gained experience with GitHub and also a better understanding of CSS. More on that project can be found
here.
And not knowing any tools was an easy challenge to overcome. I just learned how to use the tools.
Now I don't want to undermine that task. It took time, a lot of it. I have been spending months trying to create this page
and its not even close to where I hope it will be by the time I am done. But for now, I am learning and learning quickly. I learned that
JavaScript is not the best place to put blocks of text and that its a lot harder to stay organized and maintain my pages.
A very ugly first prototype. Many things were changed for the better.
Tools and Skills
Adobe XD
Wireframing and Prototyping
HTML, SCSS, JS
Lots and lots of this
Sketching
Drawing!
Visual Studio Code
Git Integration, Extensions
