The product design process, using my portfolio as a subject.

How I designed my portfolio by applying the process described in a book, Elements of UX Design by Jesse James Garrett.

INTRODUCTION
I’m doing small micro-projects to learn and show my process to potential gigs. I recently read a pretty sound UX design book, Elements of User experience, and saw a detailed sequential process of UX design. I was eager to follow through and learn if it works for me.

THE PROCESS
It consists of:
User needs/Product objectives
Functional specifications/Content requirements
Interaction design/Information architecture
Interface design/Navigation design/Information design
Visual design

The model took from the book, Elements of UX Design by Jesse James Garrett

User needs/Product objectives — Strategy

I’ve listed major objectives and highlighted the most essential ones.

Functional specifications/Content requirements — Scope

Minimalistic list of scope requirements, the essential ones. Barring search functionality.

Interaction design/Information architecture — Structure

Simple user flow and information architecture.

Interface design/Navigation design/Information design — Skeleton

A rough navigation and interface design

A further look into possible wireframe of the main page, and inner project page

Visual design — Surface

I’ve already reached my goal of trying out this process so I’ve skipped last part.

REFLECTION/INSIGHTS

I have only entered this process on a very superficial level, it has more depth.

The process is logical and simple it can be used to do a quick UX design attempt to get a general feel for the project.

I was completely blank at the visual part and the reason why that happened is that there were minimal explorations on how user feels when he sees colors, pictures, layouts.

I missed many parts of design thinking.

Information architecture and skeleton was not necessary for such a small project.