Before starting to visualize my ideas, my priorities were to visually create the complete content of the portal by printing all the pages to identify page by page where the flaws and the most revealing functionalities are. Armed with several stick note pads, I identified usability and visual defects in each page and noted those elements that did not need changes, but I put a special interest where improvements were needed.
After I identified all defects, flows, and good features in the flow, I made an activity diagram (using pencil and paper) to help me understand the entire flow of this portal. However, before starting to put ideas to improve the application, I did an investigation of features used by the competition that were not in this application. And this was the next step I took.