Building a user-centred UX portfolio
Things to know, consider and cry about…
Shameless plug on my own portfolio for reference: https://jackstrachan.co/
Portfolios are outdated. They have become a symbol of how to judge a student or a beginners ability based on a cold hard PDF that has been emailed as fast as it could be deleted (PDF’s are the norm but more on that later). Unfortunately for students, there are no visible ways around this, without a depth of experience or a long list of decent contacts a portfolio of work is one of the most common ways to land an internship or first job.
This isn’t a post to go through how to build the best portfolio though, it’s a post of important things I have learnt to consider before and during building my own portfolio. Before deciding to make my first UX portfolio I dived into researching how I could make it as effective as possible and why. Portfolios are a big commitment, every little detail is considered but not every little detail is ever noticed. Not only do you need to communicate your execution but communicate how you think as a designer and as a person, what your approach is and who you are.
That’s why I believe online portfolios are perhaps the best opportunity for designers to separate themselves. Especially beginners. Not to mention that digital design is what most companies are looking for but you are giving yourself a chance to present your best work with the best user experience of your website possible. The portfolio will no longer contain all of the limitations of a static pdf but be a live site in which people can freely visit and you can freely improve.
With this said, the most important question you need to ask yourself before committing your time to a portfolio is why?
By stopping for a moment before you build your portfolio you should aim to write down a simple objective for what you’re doing and how you would like to make people feel whilst looking at your portfolio. Trust me, it makes everything else so much easier once you have a tangible objective to compare your work against, it helps you make better decisions.
What I’d recommend is stop for a moment, and write down a simple objective for what you’re doing and how you’d like people to feel. Try and use precise words.
By using your objective you are able to decide on how to prioritise content, personality and experience throughout the portfolio to communicate the message you want. Do you even need a portfolio to make people know what you are capable of? Remember, real people, are looking for you so it’s either how you can make them feel something or how your portfolio can.
A short piece on building
Ok, I’m no genius. I’m probably the least talented out of all my peers but I just like working hard and getting shit done. So when it came to building an online portfolio I had no previous knowledge or background in developing for the web.
This is when you start crying about learning how to code btw
But it’s not actually that bad, at least if you know where to look. There’s plenty of template web services that are pretty easy and nice to use. Unfortunately, I was too stubborn to use a ‘template’. I wanted more freedom in my expression so I could place more emphasis on the fact that I built the experience rather than used a templates existing experience. So I got onto Wordpress, got a plugin that would do the backend coding whilst allowing me freedom with the front end (semplice if you were thinking which plugin) and went for it.
Accessiblity is everything
I think that what could be the biggest mistake for some of us when we are building a portfolio is forgetting that modern-day portfolios are going to be viewed on a screen, across different devices. Not to disregard print portfolios but reaching busy people who are going to hire you is perhaps best done through their most common devices for information.
You should consider how your portfolio is going to be received and viewed. PDF’s work on mobile phones fine but I question the experience of loading them. Online portfolios are more flexible. They can be loaded from different devices whilst being responsive and can be sent through multiple channels.
As a side note…why add your portfolio to someones already full inbox? Try thinking about leaving it somewhere reactive like twitter of instagram maybe? How do people feel about this? I’m getting quite a lot of portfolio feedback over Twitter and I think it’s down to people responding to social notifications faster than inbox notifications.
Letting go
I guess my last point of this rough and hopefully useful post is about knowing when to let go of your portfolio and release it. This is something I’m sure many people struggle with, knowing when something is finished in art or design is difficult as you become so connected with your work you want to continually improve it on based your own standards. Just remember that what’s 6 months old to you is a new to someone else.
By realising your portfolio to mentors, friends or tutors first you can start to gather feedback on your portfolio. The most important thing to do is not to listen to everyone and make every little change but remember your objective and try to establish patterns in the feedback for areas you can improve. Then, I think you are ready to let go and release your portfolio.
I’m currently in this testing stage before using my own portfolio to apply for another internship in the summer. My website is by no means any good but I’m hoping to has the message I wanted to get across. It would great if anyone has any feedback or questions so feel free to get in touch.
I want to learn, design and write stuff. I’m currently an intern in the user experience team at Bosch Power Tools and an Industrial Design student at Loughborough University.
