Post your crit here!
Here's your criteria:
• overall usability of the site
• the degree to which it pushes boundaries / questions traditional presentation of portfolio work
• same as above but for overall site navigation
• if the site utilizes linear / cinematic elements (such as transitions, image sequences, etc) and the success of those linear elements
• overall organization of the work -- logical? interesting?
Here's your criteria:
• overall usability of the site
• the degree to which it pushes boundaries / questions traditional presentation of portfolio work
• same as above but for overall site navigation
• if the site utilizes linear / cinematic elements (such as transitions, image sequences, etc) and the success of those linear elements
• overall organization of the work -- logical? interesting?
What you hoped to achieve in its design:
By showcasing all my work, I was hoping to create an interest in the user to get closer and deeper into a project. Without hiding the work, the user is able to effortlessly, through clicking (the standard web interaction), learn more about a large body of work as a whole. As important as the work is, it was necessary to allow images to consume the space entirely as well, taking precedence over anything else.
Rationale for the design decisions you made:
Simple and clean , the design was meant to facilitate a natural interaction. Different in its sense of transparency and visual intrigue (large photos, all work exhibited at once), I was hoping to allow the user to see all the work, easily without a bias to medium. Rather than hiding the work in categories that take a click to access, you are rather encouraged to explore by will, not through the navigation; The navigation is there only to help you if you get lost and to give things a name for reference.
What you learned through this process:
Said it before, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. I'm not concerned with this website being innovative or crazy, rather I learned a lot about user experience and the logic (or lack thereof) of interaction. I often asked myself and those within my immediate environment, "does that make sense," "is that weird," "what would you do." It seems that with web work (or those thing implicitly interactive), we ask these questions often because they seem important to the progress. But isn't all design interactive? I mean, I like to consider what I do "facilitation" so after this experience I'm sure to ask similar questions in any project. Eye-opener.
What you are most proud of:
Getting through the semester, making something I will actually use, and applying the knowledge I learned from listening effective.
What you struggled most with:
AS3—eff this stuff. Too much ambition in too little a time. Remember to charge a lot for writing it. There are a million ways to do one thing, and most of the ways I go about doing it are wrong and make everything slow. It's definitely like learning another language, and still, I feel like all I know "donde el baño."
