Early-Career Designer Portfolio Review - Terry Bolden Jr.

Connect with Terry!
/ terry-bolden-jr77
terryboldenjr77.wixsite.com/m...
Some takeaways:
* Terry has a portfolio made up of ONLY real world projects, and that shows he’s ambitious and a go-getter, someone on the lookout for actual problems to solve.
* Terry went through a program called Merit America. “Merit America is a national nonprofit organization that creates fast, flexible pathways to family-sustaining careers for Americans stuck in low-wage jobs.” Because of this program, Terry has made a major career change into technology, from a background in warehouse management and operations, NOT tech.
* This design doesn’t align with the ‘typical’ (and somewhat cookie cutter) portfolio websites, and I think that’s perfectly okay. Terry has a lot of room to grow his visual design skills, and those are skills that he will naturally grow through doing this work.
* I love that Terry is helping small businesses and solopreneurs get their work to a larger audience. Lots of his clients and customers have been selling their services or products offline. He’s solving the problem of getting them online. These websites will grow, expand and improve over time. Terry is helping them get from “zero to one” and that’s powerful.
* Making it easy for these small business owners to make money is important. Meeting them where they are in terms of technical knowledge and skill is even better. Many designers would struggle to communicate with stakeholders who lack technical expertise, so Terry’s ability to communicate with them about their needs at a level they understand is critical for his (and their) success.
* I would probably lean on the layouts provided by squarespace to display the products in a more traditional layout, and I would hope to replace images with more crisp versions as they become available.
* I wasn’t able to add a product to an order immediately, and found it a little frustrating. Definitely needs some refinement for the navigation between viewing items and actually buying items.
* Have someone review the content on your Client Pain Points section to make sure you’re not repeating text.
* Update the text colors of the slider/carousel content to make it more readable.
* Limit the number of fonts used on the website to 3 at most. Review the website on different size screens to make sure it looks the way you expect it to on other devices. Don’t forget to check different browsers!
* Be really clear about what you’re asking from users if they need to give customization details.
Love the work, excited to see you succeed, Terry!
Viewers: what are your takeaways?
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Hey Team! Today we have another in the series of Early Career Designer Portfolio Reviews, where I conduct a kind of UI assessment called a Cognitive Walkthrough. I review an early career designers portfolio and resume and give feedback for ways to improve it as they look for a job in the UX industry.
I'm a Sr. UX Designer with 9+ years of experience in UX design and a passion for helping early career designers as they make a career shift into tech. You can find out more about me at maigenthomas.com
Also, you can find out about me at www.patreon.com/maigenux where I hope you'll join an awesome crew of folks as I provide motivation and mentorship, build an apprenticeship agency to employ early-career designers and teach UX as I do UX.
If you're up for a portfolio review, you can sign up at this link: bit.ly/UX-PortfolioReview You don't have to agree to allow me to post it on the channel but it's appreciated if you're willing.
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