I posted the beginnings of my portfolio last month and got some great feedback. However, I finally put the finishing touches on it and I would love to get some new feedback. Be it layout, grammar, content, code reviews, etc, I welcome any criticism as long as it's constructive. http://www.danwellman.com/

I am not a professional, so keep that in mind with what I have to say.

Each of your projects has a huge page devoted to it. With the exception of Cellular Automatica, which has many sub projects, the amount of space you use isn't really necessary. Some of your descriptions get a little wordy too.

Look at it from an HR person's perspective, you have probably at least 20 resumes and portfolios to get through (I'm guessing very conservatively. I've heard of people that get stacks in the 100s). They probably aren't going to read everything you've written. They'll probably watch the videos, and note that you have code samples for someone in the department to look at.

That in mind, I'd bump the videos higher up the page and cut your descriptions down a lot.

Status and technical features can both be part of the description, and your technical overview would probably be fine with just a code sample. A hiring manager would probably just look at your code and either 1. know what it means that way or 2. wonder why you aren't commenting your code (I didn't check your code samples).

I'd also consider adding some light CSS to your site. It's very plain right now. Even a really simple CSS would be good. Since you're a programmer you might not be 100% on color theory, so use something like these http://speckyboy.com/2008/01/13/top-10-resources-to-the-perfect-color-scheme-for-web-designers/ or http://colorschemedesigner.com/ to see what color schemes won't look horrible (at least they'd follow sound color theory.

This is unrelated to your actual portfolio, but I like your UI library. It's something I've been thinking of for some time. After much experience with CEGUI, I'd love to see a UI library that was written almost entirely in script. I would've taken my idea even further than yours, though, and actually defined all the widgets and so on in script as well. Anyway, keep it up :)

@way2lazy2care
Thanks for the feedback. I have no expectations that HR would read everything I wrote. That's the main reason I put so many videos in. I do agree that some descriptions are a bit wordy. I rewrote some last night, and will take another pass tonight. I might cut a couple sections also.

I'll consider a more interesting color scheme. I actually designed it to be very plain. I didn't want any distractions, just simple and straightforward.


@Codeka
CEGUI actually inspired me to create Shear. ;)
Hopefully someday I'll have time to finish it and release it as a library for others to use.

Quote: Original post by m_switch
@way2lazy2care
Thanks for the feedback. I have no expectations that HR would read everything I wrote. That's the main reason I put so many videos in. I do agree that some descriptions are a bit wordy. I rewrote some last night, and will take another pass tonight. I might cut a couple sections also.

Then may I suggest having a "Videos" section towards the top of each of your things? Especially considering you already have the videos, it's a shame to have them buried so far down the page.

Especially as the work is pretty impressive and speaks better for itself than you do (no offense to your verbiage).

Quote: I'll consider a more interesting color scheme. I actually designed it to be very plain. I didn't want any distractions, just simple and straightforward.

I don't mean anything distracting, just something not gray and not default font headers would make a huge difference.

For example, this forum is mostly gray, not distracting, but the blue really makes it something slightly more impact-ful visually. And changing the font on the headers to something like Helvetica/Arial would make a huge difference.

There's a tremendous difference between avoiding distraction and looking like you just threw a website together you don't really care about. The portfolio can say as much about you as the content in your portfolio.

Of course, I have an art minor, so I might be slightly more design conscious than a lot of people.