Portfolio Redesign: Problems with the Old Design
Although it does have some merits, the existing portfolio design is ineffective. I believe that the content, navigation, and layout all have significant room for improvement.
Here I outline the existing design's shortcomings. The depth of these issues is the reason I'm pursuing a full redesign (as opposed to mere iteration), and I will measure the success of the new design by the degree to which these issues disappear.
Content
The current content is too focused on the artifacts themselves: the emphasis and discussion is on the final products, rather than the process by which those products were created. This is primarily because I did not save any design artifacts from old projects (I never suspected they would be needed after I left the job).
The current content is also too monolithic: individual pages are very long, and I suspect that this length is responsible for many visitors leaving prematurely. On most pages, all content dealing with a single project is presented en masse, rather than segmented according to employer goals or topic.
Navigation
In the current design, most entries in the portfolio are dead ends: a visitor must back up or return home in order to find more material. Site logs show that many visitors do not do this, opting instead to simply leave. The global navigation alone is insufficient.
Additionally, the hazy split between "design" and "school" does not align with the feedback I've received about potential employers' needs and goals. As with the content, this split describes the artifacts themselves, rather than the message and (I hope) value that the portfolio itself could offer.
Page Layout
The existing page layout was selected primarily due to schedule constraints: it had already been implemented and was ready to use, and it served the minimum requirements for displaying content. Because this layout is based on a generic container into which content can be placed, all pages—both gallery pages and content-node pages—appear the same, even though their goals and purposes are almost completely different.