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Hello, I'm Cristina Baciu
Dianne Price, Director Marketing & Communications & Shireen Dooling, Graphic Designer, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University
Ease in navigation (links, organized layout)
We found your site to be very inviting and user-friendly, in terms of both the visual design and the language. The friendly tone you established with your words felt authentic (and not heavy-handed or condescending/puffy as these so often can be).
Recommendation: You may have used a style guide, but I wasn’t able to discern (e.g., Associated Press style, Chicago Manual of Style), but be sure to use a style guide if only to keep consistent the manner in which you use words, numbers and punctuation. One thing I caught was “life style” used two ways: “life style” and “lifestyle”. There were a few other like sometimes spelling out numbers and sometimes using digits.
Recommendation: On the home page tabs, consider changing “Resources” to “Professional work”. That way it would be consistent with “Academic work” – and allows the reader to better understand at first glance what the “resources” section is all about.
High-five!: We loved the phrase “educational road trip.”
Visual appeal (font, colors, pictures, icons)The visuals you choose made for a very strong theme – that theme (academic/education) was carried out nicely throughout the site. The large visual and brief text on the home page “invited” us in to your site. The manner in which you constructed the home page gave us a good first total picture (we could see what this was going to be all about); and the limited use of tabs made us think that this was information that was consumable. In other words, the white space, fonts, colors, and photos did not overwhelm us and discourage us from reading on.
We appreciated that you chose a modern font and used plenty of white space. As a rule, you generally want to keep the body copy the same size throughout – and have the “kerning” consistent. There were a few spaces that were out of sync with the major look.
Recommendation: Make your home page photo larger. This is all about YOU, so we would have liked to see a larger photo of your face.
Recommendation: On your “Academic work” page, it would help to make the photos the same size vertical as the paragraph they are attached to. In other words, to have the photo size match vertically the paragraph length.) For example, the “Adult Education in Prison” was a bit too large and the “Students’ Learning Assessment…” a bit too small
High-five!: Colored pencil visual was outstanding. Really drew us into the content, while providing some nice “eye candy.”
Usefulness (are relevant items included? is your bio-profile distinct?)We felt that the endorsement section had just enough items to make it inviting and not overwhelming. Also, the diversity of people and their professions was most useful.
High-five!: We were attracted to the phrase, “Let’s chat!” and how easy you made it for the reader to contact you.
Dr. Nicole Legate, Assistant Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology
Cristina has created a great professional website that will help others to learn about her and her work. I appreciated the ease of the webpage’s navigation, including how organized the layout was. It is also very visually appealing, although there was a bit too much text at times. The content is useful and relevant, though I thought that some of it could be clearer and simpler (for example, on the CV page). There were a few typos that I found as well (e.g., “what does it happen to the inmates” on the academic writing page). Finally, I would suggest Cristina infuse more personality in it, especially on the 'about' page. This could be things like hobbies or interests, or more on personal background, why she is interested in the field of education, or even how to pronounce her last name. These small changes will improve the value of her webpage even more!
Dr. Arlen Moller, Associate Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology
a.) Ease in navigation (links, organized layout)
I found it very easy to navigate the website, everything was easy to find.
b.) Visual appeal (font, colors, pictures, icons)
I think the site is visually appealing.
c.) Usefulness (are relevant items included? is your bio-profile distinct?)
The CV tab currently leads to a page that includes both your CV and a "Letter of Intent." It is a little unusual to see a letter of intent on a professional website like this, so that could potentially get removed. Otherwise, yes, I think all relevant information is included. If securing admission to a Ph.D. program in Educational Leadership and Higher Ed is the goal, then it makes sense to accentuate your interest and past experience in leadership as much as possible. Experience supervising others, for example.
d.) Suggestions
This is a minor suggestion, but typically in higher ed, I see people share only their LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Instagram is unusual, unless you are in the visual arts and the account is related to your professional identity.