Since I’m currently between jobs I am expanding my skill set by taking Treehouse courses in the hope of making myself a better job candidate. Up-to-now I’ve been entirely self-taught in web design, so I knew there were gaps in my knowledge that I should fill. Most of the HTML courses have been review, but the CSS classes are blowing my mind. There’s so much I didn’t learn about selectors and combinators, plus best practices for writing stylesheets. Once I finish the HTML/CSS classes I plan to learn some Javascript, PHP, and possibly Ruby. If you’re interested in some self-guided learning, I’d definitely recommend Treehouse. It’s only $25/month for unlimited access to all of the course videos, quizzes, and projects and you can use my discount code so your first month is 50% off.

After learning some new tricks, I’m inspired to redesign my portfolio and website. Unfortunately, since this site is hosted on WordPress.com I’m limited in how much I can customize it. Thereore it will take some time for me to sign up for a new host and get everything transferred over and customized. I realized that this would also be a good chance to demonstrate some UX skills, so I’m documenting the process from the rough sketch < low-fidelity mock-up < high-fidelity prototype. See all the steps below for my new homepage design.  The featured image at the top show’s my high-fidelity prototype created with HTML/CSS.

Notice that some revisions have been made between versions. That’s expected as the design evolves. Let me know what you think! I’m working hard to implement the new site design as soon as I am able.