Setting Up Your UX/Product Design Portfolio and LandingYour First Job
It is a common joke that as a Product/UX Designer, your portfolio is never really done and I can tell you for free that it is indeed very true.
Setting up a portfolio that you are satisfied with as a designer is a very hard process, but the first step in getting it right is realizing that it does not need to be ‘that deep’. There are basic criteria which a portfolio must meet which include
- A body of work/projects you have done in the past
- Clear indication/pointer to your work flow
- How you approach problems
- Your UX design flow- Storyboarding, research, wireframing. design thinking
- How you bring a design to life- from ideation to prototype (Including Case-studies)
- UI gallery of previous work
A major problem for upcoming designers is where to host the portfolio, how to host it and how to effectively share portfolio while spending little or no money. There are several ways to achieve this, thankfully, there are FREE tools that help designers to showcase their work and these include/not limited to
- Notion: with Notion, you can create a shareable body of work that includes all of the elements mentioned above: previous projects, design process, UI gallery etc. You can also generate a URL or save as pdf. You can publish pages to the web the same way you would publish any website and pages can be indexed by search engines.To learn more about creating a portfolio with Notion, CLICK HERE: https://www.notion.so
- Figma: You can now share your portfolio website as a figma prototype link. This may not be best for beginners who do not know how to navigate figma prototype perfectly but if you do, it is a great option
- Disha pages/Link tree: These tools help put all your project and links in one place so that you can easily share. You can add a brief summary of yourself, Your experience, UI Gallery and your Dribble annd behance links. Get started by clicking https://disha.page OR https://linktr.ee › register
- Google Sites: Google sites is about my favourite portfolio creator. There are already several themes available on Google sites and there is also provision to create a custom theme. This method is cost-effective, saves time and energy Get started at https://sites.google.com
- Self-Hosting on a CMS:Traditionally, you can also self-host your porfolio on a CMS like WIX, Wordpress, SquareSpace or Ghost. This allows you to have your own custom shareable URL although it involves a lot of technical setup.
Some would argue that as an entry level designer, your Dribble or Behance link is sufficient but in today’s UX market which is full of many incredible talent; I would say you need to do a bit more than that.
I recently got my own designer portfolio done, and even though like i said at the start of this article; it isn’t actually fully done to my taste yet, it is done enough to share so I say to you too, regardless of how well done your portfolio is, share and then compete it as you go; be like me. Portfolio can be viewed at https://sites.google.com/view/korede-adelaja/home
I hope you actually get on designing your portfolio from today and start sharing your work, since you have read till this point.
