
Hello HN: I am quitting school for freelance, here's my portfolio - ivanzhao
http://ivzhao.com
======
endtime
Good luck! A few bugs/suggestions:

* I understand the goal of the mouseover highlight, but the light grey text is a little too light, I think. I didn't realize at first that I was supposed to mouse over, and assumed the styling was broken.

* The tooltip hover thing on thumbnails has some unintuitive behavior - specifically, mousing over where the tooltip would appear causes it to appear. So if I put the mouse just above "Contax T2" I get the tooltip for your barber's website. This only seems to happen after the tooltip has been shown once already.

* The thumbnails move down a pixel or two when their tooltip shows up - but once I mouse over the related link, mousing over the thumbnail itself no longer causes it to move.

* Left column is totally broken in Opera: <http://i.imgur.com/0iiNT.png>

~~~
ivanzhao
Thank you for your suggestions (especially the one about Opera). I have
darkened the text, now working on other issues.

~~~
nostromo
You might want to darken it some more, It's quite hard to read. On a touch
device, like the iPad, there is no mouse-over. Even if I touch the text, it
stays light gray. My personal rule of thumb is to think twice about every
onmouseover design decision because of the proliferation of touch and mobile
devices.

~~~
ryan-allen
I still can't read the text. As a developer who has spent a lot of time
working with designers, this screams to me that you're unrealistic and don't
think about your actual audience. So I'd fix the damn text contrast. And if
that requires a complete reshuffle of your design, so be it!

------
ivanzhao
Hello HN,

After 6+ years in university (undergrad + graduate + research), I have decided
to put aside my interests in science and to pursue a career in the web (enough
academia bureaucracy)

I do iPhone & web development, and quite capable with design. I would prefer
to stay in Vancouver and work remotely, but also open to other options.

Thanks,

Ivan

~~~
alnayyir
Why'd you rip off the original Wiki Game website wholesale and turn it into an
iPhone app?

<http://thewikigame.com/>

<http://wikipediagame.posterous.com/>

I don't see your name anywhere on either of those pages.

Do you plan to keep ripping off websites/web apps and converting them to
iPhone apps in order to boost your portfolio?

Edit: I didn't link his version because I didn't want to add fuel to the fire.

Edit2: Wiki Game creator says it's cool, then I have nothing to be annoyed
about. S'all good. :)

~~~
ivanzhao
alnayyir,

I did not rip off The Wiki Game, at least wasn't intent to do so.

In The Wiki Game, problems are randomly generated.

In 3 Degree of Wikipedia (my app), they are created by other players, and
limited to 3 degrees only, so each connection puzzle can actually encapsulate
a concept that's meaningful and worth learning. Besides, all puzzles are
dynamically ranked to filter out the bad ones (like HN).

I intent to make it an app for learning.

Hope this answers your questions.

Ivan

~~~
alnayyir
Did you at least have consent from them to rehash their idea?

<http://hackerne.ws/item?id=1981552>

Boom-shaka. You're in good shape chief.

~~~
maxawaytoolong
Why does he need consent?

There are already 5 other apps in the app store that do the same thing as the
wiki game, his is at least has a twist.

------
pmichaud
Ditch the "clever" text mouse over stuff.

Also, you're wrecking your information hierarchy by putting your right bar
vertically level with your big intro blur on the top left. Let that intro
blurb sit on its own with nothing to the right of it.

Good luck.

~~~
curyous
+1 this a good first step, but in terms of visual appeal and clarity of
message, you've got a long way to go. I found this to be one of the worst
websites I've visited in quite a while. I'm looking forward to when your
innovation heads in the direction of improving communication.

------
csytan
I should have posted earlier, but for what it's worth, here's a character
reference:

Ivan is one of the most hard-working people I have ever met. He aware of what
he capable of, and is constantly striving to improve his skills.

I had the opportunity to work with him on a project and would gladly work with
him again in the future. He's brutally honest, but never comes off as rude. In
an argument he will always give your side some fair thought even when he
disagrees with you completely. Every time I meet him I am impressed (and
slightly envious) by the progress he's made in his ability and projects.

So if you're looking to hire someone for a challenging and interesting
project, he comes highly recommended.

------
manicbovine
I have a suggestion:

Start with all of the text at full darkness and lighten non-focused columns on
mouseover. (Instead of starting lightened and darkening on mouseover.)

This achieves the same thing, but without the many of the usability issues.

Edit:

Some other suggestions:

* Copy-edit and grammar/spell check your writing.

* Refactor your bio and put your professional pursuits in the first paragraph: "I'm Ivan Zhao and I design things."

------
dedward
Works okay as a portfolio, others have already hit on the design details that
could probably be fixed.

I'd say - having just looked at your site, it's not clear to me what you are
selling - it's not clear to me how quickly or accurately you can deliver a
product.

Maybe I'm getting old and crotchety in my IT years - but I don't really care
from a portfolio page that you just quit anything to take a new direction in
life. You might just want to leave that out, and instead replace it with
something about how you are passionate about website architecture and design,
and all the aspects involved.

------
earnubs
Looking over the comments here I'd like to say... welcome to the world of web
design. ;)

------
plnewman
I find that the low contrast between the text and the background make this
site awfully difficult to read.

~~~
ivanzhao
It's a play of "low-lighting". Mouseover to highlight it.

EDIT: thanks for the suggestion. I just darkened the text a bit.

~~~
nonrecursive
My honest impression was that you must not be very good at what you do if you
can make something as basic as reading your site so frustrating. Then when I
came back here and read that you have to mouse over the text to read it, my
first thought was "why would someone who advertises does iOS work make their
site impossible to read on an iOS device?"

I did eventually go through and check out your 3 degrees of wikipedia app, and
thought it was very impressive.

~~~
jaxtapose
> My honest impression was that you must not be very good at what you do if
> you can make something as basic as reading your site so frustrating.

I felt that it was overly wanky and art-bloated and neglected basic principles
of Information Architecture, Usability Heuristics, and Interaction Design.

~~~
peng
Who downvoted this? UI/UX are not terms to be bandied around lightly. Just
because you can make websites pretty doesn't mean you're an interface
designer. There's a difference between graphic design (an appeal to emotion
and aesthetics) and interactive design (the science of making interfaces easy
and enjoyable to use).

------
jalpino
Your site is broken in IE7. <http://min.us/mvbDq8b>

As sad as it may be, IE6 and IE7 are still the most prominent browsers used by
corporate America. If you are building b2b apps you must be conscious of these
antiquated beasts.

Best of luck in your freelance endeavors!

EDIT: I have found this tool to be pretty useful in testing against various
versions of IE, IETester <http://goo.gl/4Egz9>

~~~
chopsueyar
You don't have the real url?

------
wmute
Be pragmatic! Now you're saying you have skills with the Web and iOS, but
you're website says otherwise.

* If you're advertising skills in web dev, using invalid HTML appears sloppy and unprofessional. <http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fivzhao.com>

* If you're also advertising skills with iOS, do visit your website from iOS, like an iPad. Then realize there are no mouseover events.

* Don't use absolute sizes, like pixels. It looks horrible in everything other than your favorite resolution. Or, you could say to which resolution should the visitor switch to, so he'll know to leave the site.

~~~
MortenK
Not passing W3C validator check can hardly be called sloppy and
unprofessional. Try running Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter,
Google, hell even super simple sites like Hacker news through W3C and see if
they validate (hint: They don't).

Agree with point 2 though, that one should be fixed.

------
zaidf
I always believed the goal of a portfolio should be to show first, tell later.

IMO you have too much text. I think if you just _showed_ me real examples of
your work, it would be more powerful. We are lucky as designers/devs that we
can communicate so much just through screenshots of our work. I'd do that!
That gives you a shot at explaining everything else about yourself once your
screenshots have impressed someone.

<shameless (hopefully helpful) self-promo> You should list yourself on
Tekbob.com :)

------
jacobolus
I don’t know if you’re looking for photographic composition advice, but
generally, I’d say: (1) cut out elements extraneous to the core concept of
each photograph, and as one means to that end (2) crop closer and fill up more
of the frame with your subjects.

My favorite shots were these:

<http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/randomone15.jpg> •
<http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/light2.jpg> •
<http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/randomone16.jpg> •
<http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/people1.jpg> •
<http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/randomtwo2.jpg> •
<http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/randomtwo5.jpg> •
<http://ivzhao.com/photography/pics/randomtwo7.jpg> •

~~~
ivanzhao
Glad you like the photos. However I usually don't associate concepts with my
photos and like to response to scenes instinctively without thinking too much
about composition. Thanks for your advice nevertheless.

~~~
jacobolus
Okay, I guess I could rephrase that. Try this experiment: respond
instinctively and take a picture, and then move about 30–50% closer to the
subject and take another picture. It is my guess that viewers (including
yourself) will like the results noticeably more. (The pictures I linked are
ones that I wouldn’t necessarily benefit from the closer crop, but most of the
others on your site would, IMO.) If in the experiment you don’t like the
results as well as your original instincts, then, of course, trust yourself.

(For what it’s worth, the vast vast majority of my own pictures suck; it’s
only through culling and cropping, and lots of practice, and hundreds of hours
spent staring at prints, and then more culling and cropping, that anyone ever
ends up with anything presentable.)

------
proexploit
I like your site. I really like your decision to quit school. I quit college
after a single semester to freelance and haven't looked back. I'm not saying
quitting school is good for everyone; but there's some people a university
education just isn't as helpful for.

Feel free to shoot me an email if you'd like to chat, take on some of my
workload or anything else. Best of luck.

~~~
yesno
He quits grad school (he has a degree already). Big difference.

No, I'm not trying to knock you off either.

------
kgosser
I was prepared to look at this thread and produce a silent laugh to myself
like most over eager people this age, but I have to say that I was really
impressed with your site's visuals and content. Anyone who can land you for a
project or two will hopefully get an asset.

Good luck. Check me out on Twitter @kgosser or www.krisgosser.com if you need
any networking help.

~~~
kgosser
With this said, there is a lot of great constructive feedback as comments; all
warrant a thought. It takes a lot for someone to open him or herself up to
feedback like this.

My 2¢ is that the feedback regarding hovers for mobiles is correct, but I can
see why you did it. Overall, it's not far off and I can see the potential you
have.

If we are going to expand this thread towards what's a good portfolio site...
well text is just as an important communication device as pictures of your
design work. The angle you took with your site and having more text than image
is ok by me. I felt like I got to know you, and even enough to comment on this
thread which I rarely do (I'm a lurker).

------
adrianscott
i suggest you learn about the role of contrast in readability/usability

~~~
ivanzhao
My take was that low-lighting allows me to pack in more information without
cluttering the page, so all can be fit into one page.

~~~
adrianscott
I'd encourage you to reconsider your design goals and potentially run some
usability a/b tests via mturk. I'd be very willing to scroll down a useful
page with info. The current design makes me want to run away (no offense
intended) rather than read/hire.

------
Shamiq
IE8 is very unsatisfied with your site. So much so, the only way I was able to
read the main content was via the page source.

------
roadnottaken
I think your site looks stunning. It really caught my eye and I actually read
the whole thing (almost) because I kept on moving my mouse away to do
something else and something would change and catch my attention. Very unique
and compelling.

Unfortunately I'm not an employer :) Good luck!

------
mlgrinshpun
From your stylesheet: html { min-width: 1080px; }

This strikes me as a bit radical. I browse on a MacBook Air (11.6"), and this
resulted in me having to scroll my window both vertically and horizontally to
read through the page. I don't have to do this, normally. Maybe shoot for 960?

~~~
ivanzhao
Hi mlgrinshpun,

Really appreciate your careful observation.

I was aware of this, and it was a design tradeoff that I was willing to take
(like this controversy "low-lighting" thing).

The big dilemma is always "how to pack a lot of information into a limited
space without looking cluttered". I also tried 980px but that extra 100px does
make a big difference (plus considering the "flow" of the text). Therefore I
gave up the relatively smaller market of netbooks/11-inches MBAs and go with
1280px screens.

Thanks,

Ivan

~~~
jacquesm
If you intend to make a living I would suggest you heed the GPs advice and
make it work on as many devices as possible.

$ trumps function trumps design in the real world.

Check out Apple (the company whose product you just ruled out) to see how it's
done.

The correct way to deal with such issues is graceful degradation.

------
widgetycrank
I like your layout, it stands out.

I think you are perhaps dimming the texts to make the highlights more
skimmable? It's a good idea, but when I read it I spent about 1 or 2 seconds
on the highlights and started skimming the rest on my own.

Perhaps you can make the main text colour static, but highlight with a bigger,
bolder font, or a different colour. Maybe a significantly different-looking
font face, or highlight the text background instead.

I really like your barber's web site btw. Very straight-forward, and the
aesthetic choice seems to be sending the right message. I had a chuckle at the
first-aid photo. :)

<http://ivzhao.com/belmont/imgs/11.jpg>

Maybe I'll check out the place, a bit pricey for me though.

------
jkent
It's a really nice looking site but it's not obvious to me what you are
offering, and how I go about getting it.

A clearer, less busy, highlight Services and 'Contact Me', perhaps. My 2c.

------
DjDarkman
Well I think:

\- The mouseover effect should be removed as soon as possible.

\- The layout looks very random and seems to lack structure, I get that it can
be printed on two sides of a paper, but doesn't really look good for a website
imho

\- Also I think it's pretty hardcore to achieve a diploma while working at the
same time, quitting is like giving up.(highly subjective)

------
andrewljohnson
I don't see any iOS projects on your portfolio site.

If you could email me what apps you have worked on at the email in my profile,
I might have work for you.

~~~
ivanzhao
It's on the page. Here's the link: <http://www.threewiki.com>

Thanks.

------
mhitza
Might I suggest making it 1024px friendly?

------
Torn
The font on your website (even mouseovered) is hard to read, and not weighty
enough.

------
2bHalfMad
good work in taking action and pursuing other opportunities. I am quitting my
awesome pay job and pursuing my dream today. Good luck!

------
jaxtapose
I got to your web site, but I couldn't read the text easily, so I left within
3 seconds.

------
zackattack
I was about to ask you whether you played ball on the Houston courts (bball,
EVR) before I realized you live in Canada. Anyway, what's your hourly rate?
Shoot me an email, please: zackster@gmail.cøm

