Applying UX Design Principles to Your Design Portfolio
It was a year back that I joined the University of Michigan’s Human Computer Interaction program. The program requires all students to complete an internship in the industry. While this is an excellent motivation, the thought of searching an internship in a new country and a new industry was extremely terrifying. Thankfully, one year later today, I know much more about user experience design. I decided to use this knowledge not only in the interviews but also apply it to my online portfolio. This article is a step-by-step guide on how to apply user-centered thinking to a design portfolio.
Understand Your User
User-centered design involves, at its core, thinking about the user and how the product can make the user’s experience more delightful. As designers, we create personas to understand our user’s goals, frustration, and motivations. I identified the primary users of my online portfolio as a recruiter and a UX expert — one would scan through my website for initial screening and the second would read the content in-depth to understand my process and design thinking. Having identified and understood my users, I was able to add features to the product which would make their workflow easier. You can similarly evaluate who your user based on why you’re building your portfolio. It can vary from job applications to creating an online space for yourself.
Provide Context
Your reader doesn’t know anything about your work and in all likelihood are reading about it for the first time. Providing a brief summary of the project sets a context for your idea. You can include a one-line summary of the problem statement, the solution, the tools you used, duration and whether it was a team/individual project. Adding this meta-information lets the reader create a rough image of what they should expect from the project.
Add the final deliverable at the top. In our quest to be good storytellers, we want to save the best for the last. However, adding the final deliverable is a good way of engaging your readers and suggests that the investment of reading the case study will be worth their time.
Adding these two — final deliverables and meta-information at the top helps recruiters since they can gauge your work at a quick glance.
Story Telling
When I was building my portfolio, I read through a lot of my senior’s portfolios. I noticed that I remembered mostly those who told stories. These stories were often vivid descriptions of the challenges the designers faced in their process followed by detailed accounts of the wins and an analysis of what worked and why. Stories are engaging and allow the user to be pulled into the designer’s world and experience what the project was like. Describing your project in an engaging manner not only makes the reader remember your project but also lets the reader empathize with you. A great example of storytelling is Akshay’s portfolio presentation. He takes the user on a journey of ups and down and the whys and hows such that the user comes out feeling like he knows Akshay and Akshay’s process.
Personalisation
As a student, I had a wide range of work I wanted to showcase on my portfolio. However, my readers might not be interested in all of my work. For example, some might be interested to see how I perform in teams, while some others might be interested in my interaction design projects. An easy way of allowing the reader to customize your portfolio is to use tags. The reader can them filter your projects using the tags that interest them. This makes it easier for the user to find information on your website.
Consistency
Continuing with my previous point of making information easy to access, consistency is key in ensuring this. Make sure your information is located in consistent places, the content is consistent and the style guides are followed everywhere. This has an added benefit of making sure your website looks better from a graphic design point of view.
These were some of the key principles I learned while reviewing portfolios. Identifying your primary user and keeping them in mind while designing your portfolio is a great way to practice your UX skills and showcase your UX design skills at the same time. I hope this helps you design your portfolio!
