The goal of designing my own website is to create a website for anyone interested in my professional achievements and goals that is simple to update, worth reading and easy to look at on any device in any browser. All updates to this project can be found on the main project page.
Focusing on content
As much as I want to jump into learning code and modifying my website, I need to keep in mind why I want people to visit my website. I want people to read about my professional goals and projects. In order for people to read about these things, there needs to be words (Crazy, I know). So I spent my first week focusing on the content of my site. I also spent some time focusing on my social media profiles such as LinkedIn because I know that if someone is looking to learn about me on this site, they will also probably check out those sites as well. My online presence isn’t just this site.
Jumping into UX design
With my basic content laid out it’s time to jump in to learning about UX (user experience) design. Even though my goal is to become a software developer, I think it’s important for me to learn UX because I want to create software that people actually want to use. I could come up with the best way to sort and categorize data, but if no one can figure out how to use it then there’s not much point in creating it. I want to learn UX design because I’ve always wondered how people decide where to put buttons and fields in apps.
I am going to spend 3 weeks drilling down on the basics of UX design using UXApprentice.com as a guide. I will also use tutorials from HackDesigns.org, free local seminars such as the “Design Research to Experience Roadmap” I went to on Thursday hosted by Slice of Lime at Galvanize, and a great list of links from helpful, local designer/developer Alex Hoffman (Follow him on Twitter, he’s a nice guy). After those 3 weeks I will attempt to make use of my newfound knowledge and use it to design this site.
Next week I’ll focus on the discovery step of the UX design process.