User Research

User Interviews

User interviews are an important way of getting direct opinions from potential users of the portfolio website to see what they find important in the end product. Questions I asked during the interview were mostly about what features users wanted to see and about their opinion on possible content and design decisions.

Competitor Analysis

A competitor analysis is used to find and analyse competitors in the same field as the developer or designer and seeing the strengths and weaknesses of other competitors' portfolio websites. I reviewed both software developers and designers because I am mainly aiming for a career in software development but I am interested in learning more about design careers since I have experience in it.

Feature Value Matrix

A feature value matrix helps a designer to determine how important the features they want in the project are by assessing the business value and user value of the features, and how easily they can be implemented in the project so that it can be finished within time constraints. I chose the features in my feature value matrix according to what I thought was interesting from competitors' portfolios and what users thought were important from user interviews.

Feature Prioritization

I prioritized the features based on what it seemed like users wanted to see according to their user interviews. This can be incorporated into building an interface by building the seemingly more important or interesting aspects of the interface first to keep users engaged even though the function might not be fully completed.

User Testing

User Stories

User stories are important because they help the designer think about what would be the reasoning behind the actions users want to take and what would satisfy the user. I created these user stories based on what I imagine would be common scenarios of users using my portfolio.

Cognitive Walkthrough

A cognitive walkthrough is a user experience test in which a user is asked to perform tasks so that the designer of the project can see what causes trouble for users, user habits, or what users like, which is important when one wants to make an interface easy and enjoyable to use for their audience. Challenges I had while conducting cognitive walkthroughs was finding out that users have different preferences in their methods to complete certain tasks, such as wanting to click a link or a picture.

User Test

The two types of tests I conducted was a question test and a click test. I chose the question test in order to get user opinions about my portfolio and see what users thought about the portfolio at first glance, and it gave me insightful results. I also chose the click test in order to see if users had the habit or preference to click first on a visible link or picture when they were given both; unfortunately, this test led to mixed results and I was unsure if people tried their best to be thoughtful about it.

Test 1

Test 2

Summary of Findings

From the user research, I was able to get a clear idea about what I wanted to do for my portfolio. With user interviews and competitor analyses specifically, I was able to decide on features and sections I wanted for my portfolio that would also please the target user audience. I went with a resume-like portfolio website, which users seemed to expect from what would be called a "software developer portfolio", but I also interviewed an art student to get their insight on a portfolio that might incorporate design if I included that too.

After I created my portfolio, with user testing I was able to understand how users felt about my portfolio. The cognitive walkthrough was useful in identifying problems or perceptions with my website with someone over multiple questions. I learned that users liked my simple interface but had some trouble finding specific things such as my email or external project documentation, or thought it had a lot of whitespace or was too simple.

Using some of the things I learned from cognitive walkthroughs, I created hypotheses based on these common issues, such as if they were more likely to click a link or image given a choice between both and if they thought the portfolio had a design that was too simple with not enough personality. However, some challenges I faced with user tests on UsabilityHub were based the fact that I was not face-to-face with the users, so I was unable to tell if they were being thoughtful with their responses, as it appeared that with the click test there were several different responses.

Incorporation of Findings

After user research and testing, I was able to gather a few ideas about what I needed to change about my portfolio. For example, I reduced whitespace and made things less far apart so they were more coherent with each other, which was raised by multiple users that I conducted cognitive walkthroughs. To incorporate that finding, I placed the "languages" and "tools" lists under the "Skills" section closer together and centered headings. I also incorporated links in both headings and related images so that people would be able to click either to get to the desired location, since this seemed to confuse one user as well.

One thing I plan to incorporate is to include more personality in my website. Personally, I like the minimalistic aesthetic and included some of my favorite colors like white, gray, and aqua in the website to fit. But I think users might be drawn more to obvious text and images to learn more about me. I plan to show more of my personality by adding more details about my personality or hobbies, and including a gallery for my graphic designs since I believe that my art and designs would able to speak about my personality as well.

Overall, I am actually more satisfied with my portfolio after incorporating changes because the changes were able to improve the appearance and usability of the website.