Ohhh we've all been there a million times haha. My advice - pick one and run with it, you can always change it later. Having something tangible on paper is better than just thinking about what you're going to do!
I love how clean and simple this is! My problem is I’m a web developer, I know what looks good (or at least I like to think I do lol), but thinking/creating something that looks good is what I find most difficult. If anyone has any designs they would like turned into a site, or wouldn’t mind sharing, I’d love to check it out and possibly code it up. I feel like a problem that a lot of new devs have is that they don’t have much design experience if any, and even though design isn’t necessarily the role we’re going for, it does probably play a role in getting to an interview/hired.
Thanks so much for the kind words! Agreed that developers who have a good eye for design are highly valued in the industry. Always pays off to stay in the loop on latest design trends, top websites/products, and scroll through Dribbble to see what UI patterns designers are coming up with.
As a current Designlab student who's in that exact same portfolio crisis phase, it was very inspiring to see your success in this super useful video! Thanks for the upload!
nice summary! it took me a long time to learn that your portfolio doesn't need to be "crazy". In fact, the more clean, simple and neutral you keep it, the wider the audience of people it will speak to and not distract from your work. I think especially new designers go into it thinking they have to reinvent the wheel and overthinking a lot of things. It really helped me to just look at some senior designer portfolios and build mine based off what I could see worked well.
Really clean and meaningful content, Every line had a reason behind it, no fillers straight to the point. AMAZING! :D Just a few small nitty gritties 1. The climate and acet case study background on your homepage fade to black while other backgrounds fade to a different color keeping each case study different 2. On the Climate Cast study i noticed a small overflow on X axis in the design section
Great portfolio! I just can't believe how one person can do all that research and design by themselves :D And I just realized I'm only a UI Designer, not a UX Designer. And I can't even share my portfolio publicly because most of them aren't even out yet :(
Loved your video and your portfolio, it looks amazing and stands out from others. One of the things I found most difficult in design as a developer is the fact that design itself is a completely different area with so many possibilities that it feels like you are never going to reach a high level enough level, theres 3D, HandDraw, UI and UX Patterns, its a never ending world. What helped me the most in that regard is getting over the fear and starting to do it until I feel it looks great, and after that, I look for some outside opinions. I start to see some things that I never really cared about before and impleting it on my design felt great. Great video.
This is great content. Thanks for sharing and providing so much insight. Obviously your video adds even more to your portfolio website which on its own is a great showcase.
The overall visual design could be stronger for a UX designer. The case study pages, in particular, lack responsiveness, which is a crucial aspect of modern web design. There are several areas for improvement throughout the website. I'm offering this feedback not to be overly critical but to help elevate your portfolio. As someone aiming to inspire others to become exceptional UX designers, it's important that your portfolio reflects best practices and sets a high standard for others to follow.
Oh I absolutely agree! Plenty to improve here, which I talk about in the video. The beauty of design is that we can always get better, it’s never ‘complete’ or ‘done’. The truth is that the portfolio gets me hired, and so I feel like it’s fair to share it as an example of something that works, but you’re on the money with your feedback. Thanks for sharing 👍
This was extremely helpful, thank you for such a great video! 😊 I only have one job experience at a company as a product designer for 5 years. Is it okay if I use mock projects to show my skills alongside work from my previous long term gig for my case studies?
Your iPhone mockups at 11:00 are amazing. Where did you find them, could you share?! They're gorgeous mockups and make such a great end to your case study.
Thank you! I used a Figma plugin called Mockuuups Studio - costs a bit of money but worth it if you do all your case studies in one go and then subscribe for a week to just grab the mockups off the plugin.
Ahhh its so hard to build your portfolio... Yesterday I bought a domain and hosting for my portfolio... decided on a Wordpress theme... and now I don't know where to start even with a template... I can't imagine how u did everything from scratch...
The best place to start, is to start :) Get something on paper! You can ALWAYS change it later, but putting something tangible in place will give you peace of mind and something to focus on.
one question, I like how you present your case study, but what if recruiter doesn't have time to read all of those text or what if they feel overwhelmed by the wall of texts? thank you
Great question, and often they won’t read it all! That’s why putting in bookmarks that outline the process is helpful. This way they can read some of it, while understanding the full process you used to arrive at your solution. I would say my case studies could be slightly shorter, but then again they’ve worked really well for me. There isn’t a ‘one size fits all’ answer here imo afraid. Try an approach, and gather feedback if it’s not working! Adapt from there 😊
How did you do the moving gradient in your hero section? Any keyword I can use to further my research would be helpful. I love the whole feel of the hero section.
Amazing portfolio! Can you share with me what option did you use to do this navigation panel in Figma- transitions on each page are not moving ? (research, define itp)
Thanks for watching! If I understand your question correctly, it's a prototype setting! You need to set the element that you want to keep in the same place (in my case the navigation panel) to "Sticky" under prototype settings.
As a brand new ui designer with know real life clients, how many projects do you advice placing on your portfolio and should it be as in detail as yours. I've only done like 2/3 projects with my course and they were all pretty much redesigned clones of existing sites. Any tips?
This is a great video! I have a question about showing "negative" events in a case study. What's is a constructive way to say that "We were told to do this a bad way and later were able to prove it was wrong?" I'm not looking to make anyone look bad and I'm POSITIVE I can't be the only one that's experienced this. Is this kind of "friction in the project" even worth telling?
Depends a bit on what you mean by “told to do this” - but anytime you tried one approach that later turned out to not work, and then changed your approach based on what you learned from the failure, it’s 100% worth sharing! Thats gold
Been off of my UI ux studies but trying to get back into it. I was using Semplice but I think I wanna switch to Webflow. Was it really that difficult to build out your case studies in Webflow?
Webflow just isn't very 'drag and drop', and definitely not as catered to designers as Semplice. If you're interested in building websites though, it's a great tool to learn for sure! I'd also check out Framer, haven't used it much myself but it's gaining a ton of traction. You can probably find a 'cloneable' Webflow website that someone else has built and use that as a starting point, will make your life much easier :)
Did you create your case studies using the CMS from webflow? Cuz I'm trying to do it using the CMS function, but it's difficult to customize each case study since not every project has the same structure.
I did not, for that exact reason haha. For my last two case studies I actually just created Figma prototypes and have linked to those from the website, much easier :)
Do I need to have a portfolio website to showcase my work? Does portfolio document work equally effectively? I’m so confused as to what should be my medium 😭
Great question - anything that you can put on your LinkedIn profile and share when you apply for jobs will do the trick! You don't necessarily need a website, you can host case studies on Dribble, Behance, etc... I just wanted a website so I could show that I designed & built that too, as a supporting piece of work to make my application stand out :)
The white font on top of the light gradient does not lend well to accessibility. Not a very good starting point for a UX portfolio. The case studies look very well done though.
Actually a great point! Not the most accessible I agree. Although the sections I want people to focus on (CTAs, header, arrow) are pretty visible. Definitely something that could be improved though nice catch!
I have my portfolio on wix but I hate it, it's hard to use, now I realize I need to find another site to host my new portfolio, which means I have to rebuild it from start, that's a nightmare.
What do you hate so much about Wix? Definitely a lot of work to migrate a site but could be a great opportunity to do some redesigning and sprucing up!
@@leanderangst Wix lacks responsiveness, I need to spend extra efforts to edit the the mobile view as I find out it's not responsive to the desktop version, and editing the component is a pain; there is a delay when I try to modify them, and the elements will jump to the top of page when I try to move them; not mention the component customization choices are limited and not professional, it is very frustrating.
I built it from scratch, took a nice long while so wouldn't necessarily recommend that route. Figma now has an 'import to Webflow' plugin that's worth checking out. OR you can copy an existing Webflow site and us that as a template to save lots of time.
Hey! Great question. Will depend a bit on the role you're going for. If it's truly a UI-only role you definitely don't need a ton of UX & research content in your case study, the focus should really be on the UI patterns/branding/final UI. It's still good to show your process - like why THAT UI solves the problem and maybe a brief summary of the research/UX work that someone else did to support that (or talk about how you'd take that into consideration). Would say 80% UI focus 20% process/UX focus. Hope that helps!
So relateble! Thank you for the video 🫡 And what do you think about portfolio on Behance? Why did you decide to make a separate website showcasing your works?
You bet! For me, building/designing the website was also a way to showcase my ability so I wanted to do it that way :) - nothing wrong with Behance, but you lose out on that part of it.
