Things are changing. If you’re not reading this in a RSS-reader you’ve probably noticed that the portfolio and the blog has been completely redesigned. I’ve scaled down and removed everything that wasn’t vital—the portfolio is now a one-page layout, and gone are the filters, the fancy animations, and the detailed case studies. The blog was in a better state to begin with, but you’ll notice that the realism is gone, and the much beloved sticky post details are nowhere to be found. I’ve designed for a better reading experience—the text is significantly bigger, and posts now auto load as you scroll to the bottom of a list page. There is less UI, less JavaScript, and more content.

Since this is my personal site, I’ve also taken the chance to do some experimentation. If you look around you may notice that there is no static navigation; there are no Home, Blog or Contact buttons in the top right corner. That would be perfectly fine if I had just one page, but now there are in fact two: the portfolio and the blog.

Now, this may turn out to be a stupid decision—which is perfectly fine—but let me explain the reasoning behind removing the navigation.

The contact details are the most obvious change. It used to be a section of it’s own, listing my mail, twitter, dribbble, Skype and RSS along with a short bio. First of all I took away all details except twitter—by limiting the number of choices I’m decreasing the cognitive load to parse all the options, and so click-through should increase. Instead of hiding this information behind a button at the top—like I did before—I always display it where it’s relevant. Finish reading an article, and you have two options: read more similar articles, or follow me on twitter. Scroll through my entire portfolio and at the end, there’s the short presentation and the option to follow me on twitter. I’m not trying to make contacting me more difficult—I’m hiding options and only presenting them to you when they are relevant.

After this change there are only two items left in the navigation: the portfolio and the blog.

The obvious drawback with removing the static navigation is that it becomes more difficult to quickly jump between the two pages. What I’m trying to achieve though, again, is to limit the amount of options and only present more options to you when they are relevant. If you arrive at tobiasahlin.com and have no idea of who I am, you’ve no reason to look at my blog. That’s why after the two most relevant items (currently Spotify and SpellRush), when you’ve gotten some sense of who I am and what I do, I invite you to read my blog, through a huge impossible-to-miss illustration.

Just like when you’re selling a product, you don’t go up to someone and say “HI, PLEASE BUY THING” (and guys, this doesn’t work for dating, either.) First you explain why your product exists, then what it does, and then you try to sell it. In this case I’m the product, and I’m trying to convince you that reading my ramblings is relevant to you.

This design optimizes for first-time visitors. My biggest fear is that people who are coming back just for the blog will arrive at the portfolio through google, and find it tedious to always scroll down to find the blog. But we’ll see if this becomes a real issue—my hope is that anyone interested in repeatedly reading the blog will tend to subscribe to the RSS feed or bookmark the blog.

Which, of course, I urge you to do.