Diigo Exploration
- Sara Francis
- Nov 6, 2017
- 4 min read
For the first assignment of Week 3 of Editing for the Web, I explored dozens of articles found in our Media Communications Diigo collection. Out of all of them, I chose three to review and comment on. In this blog post are my reviews for each article plus another article I found outside of the Diigo that I thought would be a great addition to our collection.
Marshall Taylor
The reason why I chose this article was that I wanted to be able to make my site as appealing as possible. The first thing that peaked my interest in this article was their section on trust. Trust plays a huge part in user experience. If you know your target audience, you can most likely give them things that they can relate to which will lead to them trusting you. The second point was how having images of real people can also enhance that trust. If the audience can see that the company/individual has a face and a personality, they are given a feeling of “safety and familiarity” (para 3). Finally, I found the point of minimalism important. Users don’t want to be bombarded with a ton of information all at once. Rather, they would prefer it short and to the point. With web design, less is more.
I can apply these points to my portfolio site in many ways. I can research my target audience and create content appealing to them. I can also upload images of myself to enhance their trust and to put a face to a name. Finally, I will make sure to keep my content concise and not overwhelming.
Craig Stewart
The title of this article caught my eye. I wanted to make sure my portfolio is the best it can be, so I wanted to see what tips they had in store. This site was a huge help and there were many points I could take away, but I narrowed them down to three. The first was to have a physical portfolio along with the online one. Stewart had great suggestions for how to make the tangible portfolio concise and appealing to potential employers/clients. The second was he stressed about being selective of the work that goes into the portfolio. He says you don’t want to overwhelm the viewer by giving them unnecessary content to look at. Finally, he suggested having some of your work available as a PDF download on your site. That way, employers could take some of your best work out and save it for later.
These are only a few of the many great suggestions that were in this article which I will implement. I will work on my physical portfolio, making sure that it is at its best. I will also narrow down the pieces I will display on my ePortfolio. Finally, I will design a PDF version of my best work for potential employers/clients to reference to later.
Sean
Even though this article is for a freelance services website, the points can still apply to a portfolio. Also, I was thinking of adding a freelance services section to my site so I wanted to know how I should go about it. One of the first points I found interesting was the mention of a SEO plugin. My first thought was, “They have those?” It definitely made me want to research it more and find another way to enhance my SEO performance. Next, Sean suggested having a branded email address. Frankly, I hadn’t thought of that before but it’s a good way to look professional. Finally, he mentioned testimonials on the site. That was another thing that hadn’t crossed my mind even though it makes perfect sense. If you want people to trust you and understand your value, what better way than to share the thoughts of happy customers?
I want to apply these points to my portfolio site. I would like to research and see if my CMS platform has a SEO plugin to improve my site’s ranking in the search engine. I also am considering a branded email address to make myself look more professional. Finally, I am going to email my instructors, employers, and clients and ask them if they could write a brief “review” of my work for me to post on my site.
My addition:
Learntocodewith.me
I think that this article from Learn to Code with Me would be a great addition to our MCBS Diigo. It has many great suggestions of what should be included in a portfolio to make it the best it can be. It also has real life examples so you can see what the author is referring to. It would really help any students first starting to create their portfolio sites who aren’t sure what to put on it or how it should look. This can be a great checklist to go through when developing the plan for your site.
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