Lessons learned from evaluating a UX portfolio
The amount of digital engagement required to be a UX designer is astounding. The hardest part for me has been what I’ll call the social engagement side, which ranges from looking into people on LinkedIn to viewing portfolio after portfolio as I’m planning and building my own. While LinkedIn lets people know that you’re viewing their profile and potentially their portfolio, you retain some level of distance and anonymity while looking at portfolio precedents. So when my class homework wanted me to blog about a person’s portfolio and evaluate its content and layout, I felt like that was crossing my comfort line. Luckily I have a friend who is a UX designer who I asked permission from to evaluate his portfolio, because it seems to me there could be some awkwardness if someone stumbled across an evaluation of their portfolio that they never knew existed. This lead up to even evaluating a portfolio was invaluable, and is its own rabbit hole of discussing online presence and commentary. The great thing about the UX field as a whole is its commitment to constructive and substantiated feedback, and I hope that I bring that to this blog post and future evaluations of portfolios.
My friend’s portfolio is henryhan.net, and one of the things that struck me first was the cohesion of his site. The colors blue, black and white serve simultaneously as structure, content, and visually leads a visitor around his work in a thoughtful way. The colors block out each project and distinguish each from its neighboring projects. The clear alignment on the homepage and project pages makes his work stand out and clearly legible. As in all UX, there is always room to improve however. One thing that stood out to me was the content discussing each project. While the descriptions were thoughtful and succinct, there was an overall lack of design process discussed or explanation of why choices were made. The inclusion of these insights would only enhance the work by presenting the underlying intention of certain choices in a project. Content did vary from page to page in terms of length or existence, and balancing projects that speak for themselves with supporting content is potentially an avenue for development on his site.
All in all Henry’s site was a great portfolio for me to see, not only because he is a practicing UX designer, but because I have interacted with him and can see how his personality comes through in his portfolio. This is the type of correlation that I needed to see as I delve into my own portfolio, and something hard to grasp in a lecture without making this connection firsthand.
