Last updated 2026

Colophon

This website is designed and coded by me. This is the story of how I built it and where I draw my inspiration.

tl;dr

I built this site after extensively conducting my own research on UX portfolios. The font is Inter and uses the CSS framework Tachyons. I use Figma to explore design updates, and code them in VS Code, and attempt to maintain updates using a private github repository. I use ImageOptim to compress images and the JavaScript library FancyBox to make them fancy. The backgrounds are from HeroPatterns.com and SVGBackgrounds.com.

Analysis & Documentation

Research is where this all began...

Research

In 2019, I began redesigning my portfolio. Like many designers, I quickly grew frustrated because I could not find the practical answers I needed. To overcome that, I audited over 85 portfolio websites.

My findings helped me make informed choices in the redesign of my own portfolio, from the title of each page to the choice of images. I continue to iterate and optimize my website based on those findings and feedback from trusted sources.

A high-level write-up of my portfolio research can be found on my blog: 2019 Audit of UX Portfolios.

Documentation

Additional blog posts documenting my process can be found under the tag “portfolio” — but here are a few interesting posts:

  • Nov 4, 2019: How I used problem solving principles from mathematician George Pólya to break down my portfolio problems into subproblems, strategies, and actions.
  • Sept 17, 2019: A collection of portfolio resources, organized into sites (guides, essays, collections), tools, and people.
  • March 11, 2021: A review of design updates that were centered on the theme of unification. The updates focused on main images, featured projects, personal branding, image ratios, colors, language and tone, and mobile enhancements.

Design

My design inspiration for this site draws from Swiss poster designs, as well as the following:

Inter: A Font Built for Screens

Inter is a variable font family carefully crafted & designed for computer screens.

Inter features a tall x-height to aid in readability of mixed-case and lower-case text. Several OpenType features are provided as well, like contextual alternates that adjusts punctuation depending on the shape of surrounding glyphs, slashed zero for when you need to disambiguate “0” from “o”, tabular numbers, etc.

The Inter project is led by Rasmus Andersson, a Swedish maker–of–software living in San Francisco. To find out more about Inter, visit rsms.me/inter/ or find it on Google Fonts. Contribute at github.com/rsms/inter.

Tachyons: Functional CSS Built for Humans

Tachyons is functional CSS for humans. It is fast loading, highly readable, and 100% responsive.

Tachyons is built with six principles:

  • Responsive
  • Readable
  • Modular
  • Accessible
  • Performant
  • Reusable

It features a mobile-first CSS architecture, a single purpose class structure, a nestable responsive grid system, careful documentation, and a lightweight library.

Read the docs, download the CSS, and learn more at tachyons.io.

A tachyon /ˈtæki.ɒn/ or tachyonic particle is a hypothetical particle that always moves faster than light. The word comes from the Greek: ταχύς or tachys, meaning “swift, quick, fast, rapid”

Using AI

In 2026, I implemented new updates, this time working with Claude and Gemini.

Claude helped more with "soft" tasks, such as suggesting narrative structures and feedback on page design. Gemini helped better at "hard" tasks, providing javascript code and improving site performance.

I asked both of them to write a 2-3 sentence, first-person narrative summarizing our work together — here are their responses:

Claude

I worked with Allison to develop narrative structures for her UX portfolio case studies and work samples, helping her find consistent ways to frame her project stories across problem, approach, and outcome. I created a reusable HTML template built on her existing Tachyons-based site that she adapted for each project, and we developed individual narrative structure documents for each case study to guide her as she built out the pages. I also provided feedback on content, storytelling, and page structure as she shared screenshots and code throughout the process.

Gemini

We teamed up to refactor your UX portfolio layout by systematically moving away from legacy floats and clearfixes toward a clean, modern Tachyons Flexbox system. Along the way, we streamlined your asset pipeline by creating an Automator script to convert PDFs into 300 DPI images, untangling a duplicate file issue in GitHub, and engineering a smooth-scrolling, universal "Back to Top" button. By precisely balancing your image aspect ratios and alignment utilities, we optimized your code to ensure your site is highly performant and easy to maintain.

🚧 This website is always under construction.