Let the Work Speak, and Explain Its Context
Results attract attention. Full context lets people judge what those results mean.
Move from Titles to Verifiable Content
Personal websites often emphasize titles, years of experience and numbers. These provide background, but visitors still need to know what the author owned, what constraints they faced, what decisions they made and how outcomes were observed.
A work page can follow problem, role, key choices, results and limitations. For team outcomes, explain your own contribution. Separate untested assumptions from observed results.
Credibility Involves Expertise and Trustworthiness
Fogg and colleagues' 2001 study of website credibility collected valid questionnaires from 1,410 participants in the United States and Finland. Real-world cues, usability, expertise and trustworthiness were among the factors associated with perceived credibility.
A personal site can therefore offer a clear identity, verifiable work and contact options while maintaining basic usability. The study used self-reports and has limitations in age and audience; it cannot guarantee business outcomes for a particular site today.
This Website's Approach
The homepage now features Finding the Cause Is Not the End, based on the owner’s account with product names and internal technical details omitted. It distinguishes personal actions from team decisions and does not expand the correction of one category of failures into a claim that every failure was resolved.
The archive also retains technical observations, methods and scenarios. They should not all be treated as personal project results; labels and the text should explain their basis. Owner confirmation of a public account is not an independent audit of underlying tests or after-sales records.
Research Source
- Fogg, B. J., et al. (2001). What Makes Web Sites Credible? A Report on a Large Quantitative Study. CHI 2001.