The Challenge

In one of my previous posts : I came up with all the content required for the case study. Now comes the hard part how I am going to take this content and make it an experience for the reader?

This is one of the areas I am spending a lot of time because If I don’t create a visual experience then no one will take my effort seriously. All I want is gain and guide attention of the viewer so that they can glance through my case study helping them to make judgement around it.

These are the challenges I faced while creating an experience for case study.

1. Least experience in Visual Design

2. I have the content but how to create experience around it and fit in a visual design.

3. Overthinking - Setting the bar too high by looking at portfolio of experienced designers.

4. Too many frameworks available which one to choose.

How to meet the challenge?

1. Visual Design

I should have taken up courses on Visual Design but due to time constraint, I couldn’t. Visual design is an art. One should know basics of arts like Lines, Shapes, Colors, Balance etc. I am not an expert in this area. If one has bandwidth then I would recommend taking up a full course or if you are looking for minimal information then I would suggest browsing a youtube channel GCFLearnFree.org. These videos are awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5KYlHNKQB8

At the end of the video, they have links to typography, colours and images. Typography is a big deal, once done right we can guide the attention of user based on our design decision.

2. Fitting content

I believe this is hard, you have lots of content and you also have a risk that you might burden the user with a lot of information which is not required. Hard part is how do you layout the information. I believe horizontal scroll is going to help here. Watch out for my posts on layout decision I made.

3. Overthinking

I have bookmarks of portfolio of UX designers, they are stunning in many ways. Being a beginner I set my bar very high. Later I realised that portfolio making is an evolution. I feel most of the portfolio has evolved over time. So don’t overthink, I might not be able to reach what I envisioned but as I learn more visual design I will get there.

4. Choosing Framework

This is one area where I went wrong. I started with Bootstrap.js and later when I looked into frameworks like FullPage.js I felt my portfolio thinking is not great. When I learned web design principle I realised that I shouldn’t be thinking in terms of frameworks instead focus on basics.

Takeaways :

1. Focus on basics of web design like

   a. Typography - Its everywhere, even in this blog post.

   b. Balance in the visual design

   c. Animation to make it interesting

2. Layouts - Think in terms of how you want to layout your visual design. Browser for patterns on web.

3. In free time learn visual design a formal course is must have.