User Research
USER INTERVIEWS
User interviews are important because they give insight into what people want to see on certain types of websites. For portfolio websites, many people had the same answers which made it easier to decide the content that should go on the site. It is important to ask questions that the users can elaborate on in order to get the most out of the interviews.
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COMPETITOR ANALYSIS
The competitor analysis is a way to examine the different features that competitors have and what makes their sites stand out. I reviewed many different portfolio websites in order to take the best features of them and incorporate them into my site.
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FEATURE VALUE MATRIX
A feature value matrix is method to determine what kinds of features you want on your site and which order to implement them based on their value. Their values are determined by multiple criteria like user and business value. I selected my features based on the answers from my user interviews and the results from the competitor analysis.
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FEATURE PRIORITIZATION
I prioritized past projects and good design first in my feature value matrix. I chose these because the user interviews showed that past projects are important in a portfolio. I also decided that a good website design is also top priority because of the results from the competitor analysis and what I thought would draw more people to my site.
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User Testing
USER STORIES
User stories are a way to think about the end user of a product and what they want or need from it. By creating user stories, it allows developers to have an idea of what they need to implement and helps them come up with steps to create the different features that end users would need. I created mine by thinking of what kind of people would be viewing my site which I got from the user interviews.
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COG. WALKTHROUGH
Cognitive walkthroughs give insight into how real people use and react to your site. They are important because they give good information as to how people think when using your site. They also give really good insight into what you can improve since you have actual people giving you feedback in real time. The hardest challenge was recording how the users used my site.
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USER TEST
I chose to conduct a click test and a question test because I wanted to know if my site was easy to navigate and if the goal of it was apparent to use it. My tests reveal that it is easy to navigate my portfolio because it is a simple layout and that the users understood the goal of the site.
Click Test
Question Test
Summary of Findings
This entire process has really opened my eyes as to how to create a portfolio website with important features that users would want. The research done at the beginning of the process was helpful because it gave me an idea of what features I should include into my site. Because of this, it was easy to start to design my site because I already had all of the important features in mind before writing any HTML or CSS.
After conducting user tests, it also became apparent which parts of the interface I could improve on. Many of the users wanted more info about my skills and experience. Some parts of my portfolio are misleading because the users tried to click on areas that had no functionality. Many users also said that the design of the site could be better, which I agree with. They pointed out that the design did the job, but it wasn’t very visually appealing.
The tests were also very helpful because it showed what users expect from my portfolio and what their thought process was when seeing the site for the first time. It was easy to find my contact information and presumably any other section of the site since they are all listed out and easy to see. It is also apparent as to what the purpose of the site is after conducting the question test.
Incorporation of Findings
The main things that I plan to incorporate for my portfolio is a revamped design and adding more past projects. These are the main things that users commented on when conducting the cognitive walkthroughs and when creating the user stories. These are also the highest ranked priorities on my feature value matrix, so it makes sense that they should be the best aspects of my site.
I want to redesign the site because at the moment it is not very aesthetically pleasing. I plan on creating a new layout for it while keeping the ease of use in terms of being able to identify the different sections of the site. I plan to do this by using frameworks like Bootstrap in my design. I am also studying different sites and trying to incorporate better colors and media in my portfolio.
I also plan on having a section for my projects instead of just having my experience. I realized that having projects naturally shows what kind of experience I have so it adds more important details to the page without sacrificing anything. I will add these features with thumbnails and links to GitHub repositories so that the users of the site can look into them if they want to.