Give me your brutally honest opinion about this portfolio site I just made

[mattjunk85]

http://mattwilliams85.github.io/

Me: Junior Front-End developer, 1.5 years of experience.

Any critiques or comments welcome, I’m still working on the mobile/tablet version but otherwise this is the final draft.

Thanks!

[Senff]

Very clean and subtle. At first sight, I like it. Two things I would change though.

First, sometimes it’s not always too clear what’s clickable and what’s not. The very first page is an example of that; it took me a few seconds and clicks before I found out it was the iceberg that needed to be clicked on. I’m a big proponent of knowing what’s clickable and what’s not right off the bat, without having to “search” for it.

Second, once you click around, the Back button doesn’t take you back. For example: iceberg -> About Me. If I want to go back to see your portfolio, my instinct would tell me to hit the Back button. However, that doesn’t work, so again I had to do a bit of work to find my way around.

Minor things, and nothing too dramatic, but those two things that clashed with my instinct behavior, are what stood out for me.

[bearhead]

I think it’s pretty good… the colors and font are nice, the overall design is pretty inviting. I’ll echo what senff wrote about the iceberg… It’s just not apparent that it’s the menu (or even clickable) at first. I see that it does shake intermittently, but maybe that’s a little too subtle?

Also, based on how the navigation works (at first glance it looks like you are navigating to other pages), it does seem like the back button should be usable… a developer will realize the site is just one page, but a layman might not understand why their back button is disabled or not working as expected. Unfortunately I don’t really have any suggestions how to address that…

I checked the site with google emulating a couple different mobile devices and the text seems pretty small… maybe google’s emulation is just goofy? If it is accurate though, you should consider making the font larger for mobile devices.

Finally, the site simply does not function with javascript disabled… it is debatable whether or not you should support non-js users. However, I think if someone does visit with their js disabled, you should display a notification that js is required to view the site. It would be pretty simple with a basic <noscript> element.

[cosisb1240]

The design is really good I love the color scheme and animations you used Senff is right at the landing page I also clicked several times to get an idea that the iceberg is the one which I need to click

Further in the projects section the images you have used seems to be links and at my first understanding I thought it will open a new page because once I hover on it the mouse turns into a hand which is used mostly for links but in your case these are just images so I would suggest not to use hover.

A part from all that your design is really neat, clean and simple Loved it :)

[steves designs]

i think it comes across as a landing page maybe the iceberg could animate or spin to draw more attention to it.

[Atelierbram]

First, ‘brutally honest’ is more inviting for giving feedback than the ‘only constructive criticism’ you see too often, so compliments on the title for this thread, because that’s how we learn.

I really do like the interface with the animations; like some others I can see being puzzled by it at first (before knowing where to click), but after finding out there can be this ‘moment of revelation’ (for the open minded), and I think that is great.

For me this could get even more personality with some small changes in the typography. The letter-spacing with the “light text on dark-background” seems to be just right to me, but I think the amount of letter-spacing should be less (about halve of it) for the “dark text on light background”. This is because the space between glyphs of “light text on dark background” seems smaller to the eye. Also a more humanistic sans-serif (webfont) ISO the grotesk (Helvetica) could make it a bit less harsh and more friendly or inviting, but this might be a personal preference.

[pcenero]

Random junior web dev here.

Did some stuff on DevTools to show how it can be improved:

http://puu.sh/obUqx/2aa135d71e.jpg

Letter-spacing tightened on the heading. Added a space between first and last name. Font changed into something rounder.

[ameo]

It’s awesome. I like it. :)

[Author]

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