A user interview is an important aspect of user research that allows the developer or product idealist to undestand their userbase. Some of the questions asked in my interviews pertained to getting to know the user at a professional level and getting input as to what features of my portfolio would be the most useful to them.
A competitor analysis allows everyone on the team to know what kinds of website or products could directly (or indirectly) be competing against your product. Through this, I was able to analyze how websites like LinkedIn or Handshake could be direct competitors with my portfolio.
A feature value matrix is a chart that allows a team of developers and product managers to rate what features would have the best user value, business value, and the most minimal development effort.
After gathering results from the user interviews that I conducted and then putting them in the feature value matrix, I then was able to plot the results on a feature prioritization graph based on the ratings given for development effort and business/user value.
User Stories are important because they allow me as a developer to understand some of the main goals of the features that I'm putting on my portfolio. This allowed me to assess some of the features that I had on my website even more. If I had an end goal to each component of the page, then I start to prioritize the features that I think would best benefit many users.
A cognitive walkthrough allows the developer to meet in person with a tester (preferably people that could potentially be using the product) and have the user perform tests under the developer's directions. Users would conduct tasks, and based off of the results of those tasks, both parties can identify problems and generate possible solutions to those problems. It was difficult for me to remain completely neutral during the walkthrough since I wanted the user to fully understand how to navigate my site after they tried, but I learned through the process that it's not usually going to be perceived the "right" way immediately.
On Usability Hub, I decided to do a five-second test and a click test. I did the click test mainly to test out the usability and clarity of my navigation bar. I did a five-second test because I was worried that I might have put too much text on the page. I thought that the best way to do that was through having people be able to repeat information from my About Me from five seconds of reading.
Pulling everything together, I've gotten a taste of what people would expect or would at least want to see from a portfolio website (based off of what they already know or don't know about portfolios). From conducting user interviews, I was able to see some commonalities in what the people I interviewed would want to see in a portfolio, and this weighed heavily into my feature value matrix. I wasn't exactly sure what ratio of questions about the user to feature preference questions I should have in the interviews. Though it weighed heavliy on getting to know the user, I was able to recieve some valuable infomation that better helped me understand my user base. The competitor analysis helped me see that though there are more established websites out there that would compete against my portfolio, I had the freedom of customizability and control of content, which was very limited in most of the websites that I analyzed.
I really benefitted from user testing because it allowed me to see first-hand what kinds of decisions people make when navigating my website and also gave me insight on what changes I should make now and in the future. Through the five-second test, I was able to affirm that I had too much text on the page when noticing that some of my users had trouble recalling different things. There were some users that even completely passed questions because they just couldn't remember anything. This allowed me to see that I needed to be more straight to the point and visual when describing the things on my portfolio. The cognitive walkthroughs were the most helpful becuase I was given some concrete feedback on my website (versus trying to gauge on my own what changes I should make based off of online tests).
One of the main changes I made to the layout of my portfolio's main page was the way my text content was displayed on the page. A comment that I got during a cognitive walkthrough was that it wasn't easy to differentiate some of the sections just by space alone. I added dividers underneath all of the larger headings so that it's clearly seen that there are different sections on the page. I also added some contrast in color to add to the effect. To help with the readability of my projects, I added some small text boxes that list out some of the programming languages and technologies that were used to prevent the reader from having to search for it in a paragraph. I did something really similar for my About Me section once I found out that people had a hard time learning key points about me from the online five-second test.
During all of my cognitive walkthroughs, I noticed that none of my users knew what most of my contact icons meant, and thus were not useful to them. Because of this, I decided to add text underneath each icon to say what each contact link was. I also changed the main fonts of my headers and body because one user didn't really like the original font pairing that I had.
Overall, I think the main challenge was coming up with the design of my website. I wasn't sure how to draw things out in a way that was aesthetically pleasing, but once I was able to decide on something, I was still open to playing around with different tweaks to the overall layout. Inspecting code of other websites (and even my own) online and testing out different features helped me solidify the way I wanted my content to be displayed. It was also a challenge trying to center things and get really grounded in CSS, but I think that once I was able to figure out a particular formula for centering, then it became a lot easier. I'm thankful for the overal experience, as this has made me not just a better web programmer, but also a better UI/UX researacher.