Get Into UX by Vy Alechnavicius
My major takeaway from the beginning of this section is to consider the needs of your target audience… If you can’t UX your portfolio, how would you research and design someone else’s product or service?? Your keys users: are the recruiter and the hiring manager. Remember on these key users are humans with their own needs, challenges, and goals.
In regards to case studies, quality over quantity every time, even if the case study is conceptual work and not commercial work. And speaking of conceptual work, it’s okay to use them, but make it obvious. You can still outline the areas you’d have explored if there weren’t limitations. Make it clear what you did vs what you would’ve liked to do with more resources.
The next “bingo” in this section — tell a good story!
Vy breaks down good storytelling and tools such as the SCQA framework and Minto’s pyramid principle. As a brief refresher SCQA stands for situation, complication, question, and answer. Minto’s pyramid principle helps breakdown and add concise evidence to your answers. You want to activate the users cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses with your story plot. That sounds like a tall order? Maybe, but once again, Vy is here to help — he then gives four activities to help practice your story-telling skills. The beginning of this section is really speaking to me, I need to practice this skill.
The rest of this section is filled with great information on portfolio platform, making your UX portfolio look the fantastic, and the peripheral assets.
In peripheral assets, the thing that spoke to me personally was the bit about a cover letter. As someone new to the UX field, I don’t have much to show in my UX portfolio. Vy stresses that if you fit that criteria, you need to double down on your cover letter.
Bother with the peripherals, if your UX case studies spark interest, believe that the rest of your material will get looked at too. You need to get the key users hooked on the story of you.
Do you agree or disagree with any of this? What is your portfolio signaling for what kind of work you want to do? Is it aligning with your current goals?
- KJ
Originally published at http://blklightningcreative.com on March 17, 2022.
