A parallax-based storytelling page

How to tell my story and stand out in the job market? How to generate interest in the mind of potential hiring managers and convince them to start reading more about my background and experience?

I needed to land a job in the next 2 months, hopefully with an organization that could provide a suitable opportunity to grow in the UX field.

As a solo-project owner I faced a 2 week time constraint where I needed to account for several activities and deliverables. The end goal was to produce a highly engaging website for potential hiring managers to dive into in less than 2 weeks.

Main Tasks

1. Learning about parallax for web animation
2. Experimenting with Javascript and HTML
3. Producing Graphic Assets
4. HTML Markup and CSS Stylesheets coding
5. Testing the webpage
6. Time Management

1. Benchmarking the uses of the parallax effect on current websites
2. Inspiration
3. Conceptualisation
4. Graphic Design
5. User Interface Design
6. Design Execution

Design Toolkit

The tools, artifacts and methodologies used to deliver the tasks and challenges at hand.

I browsed and explored several websites that feature the parallax effect. I learned about the use of static or slow-moving background images against faster moving foreground images that create the illusion of a multi-layered 3D scrolling feature. This effect makes for a much more immersive user experience, engaging users and keeping them on the site longer.

I met a friend overseas who had a particular hobby. He used to buy and collect t-shirts from Hard Rock Cafe gift shops as a memento to showcase his travels. It then occurred to me to bring this concept of collecting and wearing t-shirts related to the places I have lived in and traveled to, plus my hobbies to tell my story and showcase my overall experiences when working and living abroad.

I thought about using the parallax scrolling effect to create the illusion that I am changing through t-shirts as the user scrolls down towards the footer, followed by a small paragraph of text that quickly describes each of my experiences and particular hobbies.

I quickly took a picture of myself wearing a random t-shirt. Then I photoshopped a series of t-shirts on top of my body frame to produce separate images wearing different t-shirts.

Then I created separated sections which are composed of the images and text. By adjusting the parallax effect at the right speed sections are overlaid when scrolling, thus creating the illusion that the only changing element is the t-shirt.

A single-page parallax website that tells the story of a designer who has lived and traveled the world, without sounding too boring.

I caught the attention of several companies from Finland, Sweden, Malaysia, Turkey and Brazil. I ran around 6 selection processes with different companies.

I eventually landed a job at a fast-growing startup named Sympla and relocated to Brazil in 2014, before the Soccer World Cup had taken place :).