The goal of designing my own website is to create a website for anyone interested in my professional achievements and goals that is simple to update, worth reading and easy to look at on any device in any browser. All updates to this project can be found on the main project page.

Brainstorming my SMART goal

After researching the Discovery phase of UX design, I realized that the goal I had for my project is not a SMART goal, a SMART goal is:

• Specific (and strategic): Linked to overall mission. Answers the questions of who and what.
• Measurable: How do you know you’ve achieved your goal?
• Attainable: Realistic and achievable within the time frame.
• Relevant: Aligned with current tasks and projects and focused in one area.
• Time-framed: Have a clearly defined time-frame or deadline.

My goal of “designing my own website is to create a website for anyone interested in my professional achievements and goals that is simple to update, worth reading and easy to look at on any device in any browser” is relevant, but that’s about it. It’s not very specific, impossible to measure which makes it impossible to attain and there’s not time frame set for it. I needed a better goal.

The first thing I noticed about my goal was that I started with “The goal of designing my own website…” which, in a way, is a goal within a goal. I should have a goal for my website, so then the goal of designing my website would be to reach the goal of my website. Now I would seem to have a recursive goal. Recursion is good to have in code, but bad to have in goals. That had to change. Time to brainstorm!

Unfortunately I have issues with brainstorming. I want everything I write down to sound perfect when I write it down. This hardly happens after a few revisions. It definitely doesn’t happen when brainstorming! So I forced myself to write down enough ideas to cover a sheet of notebook paper front and back before attempting to mold my ideas into a goal.

Here is my new goal.

My goal is to be working as a software developer before the year 2016. My website will help me achieve this goal by showing local tech folk my knowledge, skills and achievements. I will attract local tech folk to my site with informative Colorado Tech Weekly posts and my social media interactions. I will show off my previous knowledge, skills and achievements by showing my work, project and education history. I will show that my knowledge, skills and abilities are current and constantly improving by showing the status of self-guided, relevant projects. I will measure my success monthly by tracking webpage views from Colorado and social interactions with local tech folk.

Next I will figure out how to measure my success.