What I would have done differently If I were to start out as a UX designer again

Hi,

Are you in the process of building your first UX portfolio website? Take a break.

It’s not gonna be done anytime soon. Trust me. Been there done that.

My first UX portfolio website took me 5–6 months.

Why that long, you ask?

Because it was made from scratch.

3 years ago, I took a UX design bootcamp.

I was encouraged to use a website builder to put all the case studies I did in the course. That way I could save time and focus more on the job searching part.

But I wanted to do things differently.

Next thing I knew, I spent the next 5–6 months building a website from scratch with an engineer partner.

We finally did it. We cheered for our launch.

The website was very simple. As it turned out, it’s quite tricky to add stuff that I thought was cool to put on, like animations and such.

So we settled with a minimal, clean and functional website.

However, I only had 2 case studies on it to present my UX skills since I spent a good chunk of time trying to make the website look and run properly.

I brought it to portfolio reviews and job interviews.

The reactions to the website were lukewarm.

Most were not impressed that it was a self-made website. Instead, they were more concerned about the little number of case studies, the content of the case studies, and the functionality of the website itself.

Taking all those reactions in, I realized that the effort and the time we put in creating the website did not bring in as much ROI as I had expected.

If I were to start out again, I would have chosen a website builder for my first portfolio website.

Here’s why:

1. It took forever to build a website to run properly and look like a ‘normal’ website, let alone be unique and different.
2. Keeping all the pages consistent visually is not an easy task unless I’m a very well-established designer which I was not 3 years ago.
3. Adding changes and adjusting the content became more challenging than it should have. I did not have total control of the website myself. I relied completely on the engineer to implement those changes.

To me, job searching is a numbers game.

The more I put off applying due to the lack of having a complete portfolio website, the longer it would take to land the job.

So, although I have learned a ton working with an engineer, I would have saved this experience for my 2nd iteration rather than my first and only UX website.

Creating my first portfolio website should have been much simpler and easier to get through than it had been.

If getting a job in a short amount of time is your priority, building a website from scratch is not a way to go.

At least that was my experience. What was yours like? I would like to hear :)