NaveedLalani.com UI Concept!

Hola,

I haven't posted anything for critique for a while, been super busy with freelance and school work, thankfully things are slowing down a bit as school is almost over for the semester!

Any who, for my UI class, I had to design a basic prototype. I choose to do a concept for my portfolio. My goal was for it to be an extension of my logo, and have a unique concept. I spare you the details (had to write a 8000 word paper about it, do testing, wireframes, sitemaps, etc), so here is the semi-functional mockup:

http://www.naveedlalani.com/temp/sts/index.html

Since it was just a class project, and teacher was loading it from files on her computer, there is no preloader, it’s about 2.4 mb (again, it’s not optimized), so just be patient and it will load.

Please follow these instructions to check out the pages:

1. Wait for content to load
2. Let the logo animation play.
3. Now you are at the Home page. Click on the”?” and the help menu will come up.
4. Click “X” and the home menu will disappear, and you will be back at the home page.
5. Click Brain Structure, this will take you to the about page.
6. Click on Left and Right Hemisphere in the bottom navigation. This will take you to the portfolio page.
7. Click on Ogilvy to open up that region.
8. Click on Kodak, to view the project done for that client.
9. Click on 2 to change the picture.
10. Click “Oral Cavity’ to view the contact page.

This will just go in my concept folder (for now), but was a fun project none the less. I will be launching a simple new portfolio with all my updated work (at least the ones I can display) by Christmas time.

Sorry for the long post, and thanks in advance for the feedback!

-Naveed

Update: Added a simple (and horrific looking) preloader, my usual preloader script was acting up. Hopefully this helps those that thought it was broken.

Hey hey, I remember you posting up a critique about your splash - several months ago! At first glance when I just clicked the link, I thought it looked like a cheesy flash website. But after setting my eyes on it for longer than 10 seconds I began to appreciate the detail. However, it isn't very friendly to the 1024x768 crowd, let alone the 800x600.

I didn't really like the load time between clicking links and waiting for the fade to finish. Its nice, but I keeps me waiting, and I figure that would be a bad thing in the long run to future clients. I understand this is just a prototype, but if it were real, thats how I would feel about it.

Thats all I can think of for now. Good job!

Very nice as per usual naveed.

I like it as an idea, but it's to complex for a portfolio site in my opinion. None the less, nice flash work.

Thanks so much for your comments! Sorry for all the confusion. To cover my bases of multiple forums:

1) Yes, only prototype, hence the VERY limited functionality. The majority of the grade was actually based on the report, not this, so I didn't spend much time putting in any real functionality. This was just a little extra so my professor wouldn't have to view it in PPT haha. Of course, if this was actually functional, I couldn't have to give you the 10 steps haha. The point would be for the user to explore the site at their will and learn stuff.

2) If they can't figure out what the navigation buttons means, they can always use help. Or, once they are on one page, it will automatically tell them in the bottom nav.

2) Logo animation again is just for mockup, if I were to do it (which I may eventually), it would be a more sequence done with AE.

3) Oral Cavity means mouth... but yes its actually meant to have a bit of sarcastic tone lol, notice the suggestive mouth to the left of the content on the contact page?

4) It load so slow, because its just a combination of a bunch of high-res pngs, its not optimized at all... again just because I wanted to use this instead of giving her a crappy PPT, it would load much faster if it was the actual site. Also, my professor was viewing this from a local comp, so I didn't have any incentive to try to optimize it (and because of limited time for assignment, I spent my time on the long report).

5) Some of the background text can be read on the portfolio pages, because it is meant to have that zooming in/out feel. Again, this would be more obvious in an actual, functional version

Thanks again for checking it out

Hello Naveed,

Though I like the concept of the portfolio, I feel as if it is not appealing to me. Firstly, though the skull is very important to the concept, it gives me the wrong feeling. I think better would've been a nice face shot of you - rather then the skull. The skull gives it such a negative aura.

Graphically, the site is very simple - flash is nicely done, and everything is executed well. But it just isn't something that appeals to me, and makes me want to hire you as a designer. I liked your previous/current version of your portfolio better since it was easy to navigate, and everything was quick loading.

I'm not a fan of flash, so my opinion may be biased based off of that.

I pretty much agree with bryan le, forget the skull and make the site some more dynamic.

Will definately see that with the actual site, this was just a cool concept for my class

thanks,
naveed

its ok but i dunno just doesnt seem like a design portfolio to me. and could be confusing for ppl to navigate through.