Web Design Work

My UX Portfolio

This is the 3rd iteration of my UX portfolio. The first one I did was the very first time I ever created a UX portfolio so I chose to use a third party application called uxfol.io. This suited my purposes at the time as I created it during the middle of my course when I was busy with projects & modules.

The next iteration was where I coded it myself using HTML and CSS and some engineered Javascript. This had the benefit or looking exactly as I wanted it whilst showcasing my skills as a front end developer.

This final iteration came about as a result of 2 things. One, I was not 100% happy with it so I knew that once I had the time I would redesign and improve it and two, I decided to learn SASS from an Online tutorial and I used the redesign of my portfolio as my practical exercise. So what you see here is the result of 2 weeks hard work and learning

People have asked for my thinking behind the image on the Homepage and I explain to them that there are a number of reasons for choosing that image

• To make an impact the first time someone sees it and stand out from the crowd.
• To make it unforgettable so if someone has viewed 10 portfolios that day, mine will be remembered.
• To showcase my Photoshop skills and thereby my ability to understand the UI's of Figma, Sketch and other design tools.

SkramShots

Back in 2017 I had done a course with the Dublin Institute of Design on responsive web design and UX.

I am a keen amateur photographer and had used Wordpress previously to design and host my site. But I always found that unless you were on top of it and updated the widgets regularly, there was a danger that your website could fall over and you may not be aware of this for a few days.

So I decided to use what I had learnt with Dublin Institute of Design, and design and code my own responsive website. This allowed me to have full control over how I wanted to have my site look and behave and because it was code I did not have to worry about keeping any plugins updated.

As this is a photography site I wanted to let the images do the work rather than have text trying to entice viewers in. When they go to my site they are immediately presented with a range of images which I hope will make them curious or interested enough to move around and go from page to page.

To present them with as many images as possible in the shortest period of time I decided to design it in such a way that as soon as you hovered over some images, you were presented with a completely different image, or in some cases the colour version of a black and white image.

Incidently, one of the most common questions I get asked is where does the name come from - the answer is that when I went to buy the domain name, MarksShots was gone and a friend of mine suggested SkramShots as its my name backwards.

Cheryl Cox Counselling

A very good friend of mine is a relationship counsellor. I know her from my camera club in Malaide.

From talking to her I came to the realisation that she did not have an online presence. So as a favour to her I created a basic webpage for her, so that her clients can find her, and contact her and see just how qualified she is along with the services she offers

She returned the favour with a very good bottle of wine.