How much UX do you have in your UX Portfolio? Recruiter Alison Lawrence contacted me last year and posed that question to me directly and again in her article: http://uxmag.com/articles/how-much-ux-have-you-put-into-your-ux-portfolio
Just as the cobbler’s kids have no shoes, UX designers don’t always design their portfolios for their users.
As a UX Designer, I know first hand that it is often true that our own portfolios suffer months and years of neglect. I surmise that for most designers, being able to have a perfectly tuned portfolio website often takes a back seat to work, clients, life, and loved ones. Last year I decided that the best way to rebuild my portfolio would be to take down the existing site as motivation to design and build a new one. Bad idea. The best way to rebuild a portfolio is on another server, where you can try out different ideas, layouts, and designs. But more importantly, it is always good to show progress.
Where did you start? Where are you now? Where do you hope to be? Showing progress within a project, with a client, within a long term assignment/full time job, all help to build the story of your career. Many of us have so much more to offer clients and companies that cannot be accounted for within a resume, cv, or portfolio.
I often think of George Lucas’ quote about films when he re-released the first Star Wars trilogy in the late 1990’s.:
George Lucas : A movie is never finished, only abandoned.
Now back to the rebuild.
