Hello, world.
Welcome to my portfolio.
'Sup, I'm Alex, a dog-loving software developer and technical writer who can't design to save his life.
I'm a non-traditional computer science and technical communication senior at The University of North Texas. I love writing efficient, readable information, whether that's as code or as words. Last semester, I studied aglorithms and databases and started my senior project. Next semester, I'm finishing my degree by studying digital logic, cyber security, and more web programming.
Want to see my journey as code tinkerer and writing nut?
to present
The website for The University of North Texas's First-Year Writing (FYW) program needed to be rebuilt due to outdated information and migrating to a new CMS platform. This is my second piece written for a sponsor that's been published for public viewing.
The site will be available soon.
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I built a set of Excel Online scripts to gather and analyze my 300+ students' data so I could quickly see where they're struggling and have more time to support them. It started as a personal tool, but my boss wanted to officially use it for UNT's English Department, which led me to research MS Power Automate and the Canvas LMS API so I can make it more user friendly. I documented the heck out of it, too, so it would be easy to maintain when I graduated. Although development stopped because we no longer need the tool, I'm still maintaining the documentation so that another developer can learn from my work.
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The greatest test of communicating information as clearly and completely as possible, using as little attention as possible, is leading a course of several hundred freshmen who all need extra help with reading, writing, and the whole "college student" thing. Bonus points if they aren't guaranteed to come to class.
I had the awesome chance to break out of my comfort zone by teaching a developmental writing course at UNT. I supplemented existing cirriculum with new help pages, tutorials, and guidance posts for the asynchronous online sections. Later, I wrote lesson content, created and presented live lectures, and helped the department head overhaul the course.
Things I did:
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I'd rather not do image-heavy graphic design, but I know I'll occasionally need to. So, behold, the extent of my skills: super basic one-page stuff. Breathtaking, I know.
(Don't confuse this with designing text. I love designing text documents and could do it all day, every day.)
Ladies, gents, friends to whom those terms do not apply, I'd like to present the project that made me go "I made it. I'm a real developer."; the project where I realized I do have significant coding experience; the project where I realized difficulty is not necessarily a reflection of skill.
I'd like to present the most challening group project I've ever done, where nothing went according to plan, and everything still turned out ok.
The Texas DSHS training manual needed a content and design overhaul. So, we rewrote it completely. We added all-new interactive study tools, navigation aids, icons, callout boxes, and page layout, which greatly improved readability, organization, and visual appeal.
The cool part? I made the original information 30% more concise, and was partnered with a master's student. I also learned advanced formatting with Google Docs quick enough to make this in under a month.
This project resulted in an A+, an invitation to work on my partner's personal projects, and confidence editing unfamiliar material. I encourage you to compare our edits against the original manual.
I authored a how-to guide for iFixit, which included original research and photography. iFixit commended me on my professionalism and quality content, and they chose to publish my work.
What's harder than teaching a new skill to a complete beginner? Teaching them a skill that most people learn intuitively and that depends on another new skill.
This manual represents a huge leap in my abilities and the moment when I got serious about technical writing. I did everything from scratch, including original research and user testing, drafting, editing, designing, and creating graphics. It was an intensive project. It pushed my skills beyond what I thought possible. And I had tons of fun with it.
The resulting manual was ~8K words, was extremely well-received by the professor (earned an A+), and became an example for future classes.
My first ever how-to manual laid a strong foundation for my later software manual and training manual rewrite. I still reference it when I need a simple refresher of how-to guide dos and don'ts.
Although this was my introductory technical writing class, and although my professor was a ruthless industry-hardened copyeditor, this still recieved a 95% — one of the highest grades in the class.
Want to see what I can do in the next chapter of my career?
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