How Do You Display Your Samples of Work?
Written by Russ on April 2, 2008 – 1:38 amI started out this year by trying to find the right ways to rewrite a disastrous resume, explain what IA UXD is and now I’m trying to figure out the best way to tackle something that I’ve heard a lot of people (besides myself) in User Experience Design face challenges with:
How do I show samples of my work / my portfolio?
Almost anyone who is going to be interested in engaging you will want to see a portfolio of work in some form. The challenge lies not only in how to show that work, but when and where. I happen to be pretty particular about these sorts of things and I have ideas about an approach that works best for everyone invloved.
First and foremost is the how. How do you show this work? I can’t imagine that someone actually wants to receive the 26mb zip file with everything you’ve ever done. Full disclosure: I’ve sent that file out before and as I type this, I’m feeling more than a little embarassed by it.
I like to have control over the situation. If samples of work are going to make or break the situation, then it is best to be present when the samples are being reviewed. If that is not an option, you have to make a judgment call, and that’s never fun to do. You have to also ask yourself some questions about the party asking you to do this–what is their motivation? Why do they need to see samples of work before they’ll discuss an opportunity with you? Will they send you samples of their work so that you can determine whether or not their work product is at the same level as yours?
That last question is a doozy, but it’s also a fair question to consider. The interview process is two-way, that should never be forgotten, and if you bring more to the table than the company can currently provide to its own clients or you will offer a significant improvement to an internal workflow and/or process, that’s a negotiation point that could be the difference between being hired as a Senior Information Architect and a Director of User Experience.
Not so much of a doozy now, is it?
The when and where aspects come next. You’ve got to figure out what works best for you and what you’re willing to provide. I’m not the only person who has sent off nice samples of work only to never get another call back. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was seen their work product (or at least a very close cousin of it) show up from a previous prospective employer later in their career.
The ideal situation is to be present, in-person with whomever is going to review your work. There is always more to the story than any particular piece of work is going to show. Many not-so-great decisions are made regardless of the recommendation of a good UX designer and you should be given the opportunity to explain it. Plus, you need to allow the other party to ask the I-swear-if-I-get-asked-it-one-more-time-I’ll-scream-instead-of-simply-fake-laugh-and-answer-it question of, “When does the UX process end?”.
In the unfortunate event that you are not allowed to be present, you should present your work product in a fashion that shows your skill, provides some insight and doesn’t give away the whole magilla. This is why it makes sense to take a step back and analyze what your various work product is, organize it and prepare it to be seen by the right people and with enough information to move you along to the next phase of whatever (interview, sales) process that you are in.
Enough of this palaver. On with the show!
I started talking with peers in the IA/UX community about this dilemma. The general response was similar to what I’ve already discussed. The other response was that none of us really want to read someone else’s white paper about how involved they were in a project–those things serve a purpose that is generally not in an interview or sales pitch. Save the tree.
My approach, based upon previous experience as a mediocre designer, my desire to not give anyone else a free ride on my sweat and to gain control over how work product is displayed. The solution: Password-protected samples, with screenshots and summaries.
Pretty simple, pretty straight-forward and pretty well-received by a number of peers and other UX/IA managers.
First, I created a login screen. Sounds pretty simple–and it was:
As I went through the process and had a couple of people reviewing it, I decided to add a “Samples” tab in the top-right corner of the screen. This only appears if in the samples section and not on the rest of the site. To the rest of the world, it simply does not exist–and I’m okay with that. You’ll need to make that decision for yourself, obviously.
After much deliberation (see all that rambling above), I decided that my best approach was to categorize the work product that I have into logical sections, mostly based upon the types of deliverables I’ve been asked to provide samples of. The sections that I ended up with are:
Presentations
Personas
Site Maps
Wireframes
Other Documentation & Deliverables (Content Matrix, Annotations, Functional Requirements and Prototypes)
Once logged-in, a user would see a single-page listing of all of the deliverable types, a sampling of key deliverables and, for posterity, the ability to download resume versions. Each deliverable displays a thumbnail image, a title and 2-3 descriptive sentences about the project.
Additional peer review provided me with unanimous feedback: The amount and the voice of the content were perfect for what I set out to achieve. No one felt as if they were being overwhelmed–a couple of people even said that they enjoyed reviewing the samples because they felt they were in an easy, conversational review that was painless to get through.
I’d pay for that kind of feedback. That’s a beauty of the IA/UX community–I’ve never met a more willing, insightful and generous group of people.
When a user selects a specific deliverable from the main page, they are displayed the corresponding detail page. The detail pages display a recant of the overview of the project, 1-3 screenshots of the deliverable and a caption for each of the screenshots. I also provided navigation at the bottom of the page to allow users to view the page and quickly move on to the next sample.
I still have a page that links to full deliverables available–but that’s available for me. I don’t feel like it’s fair to anyone I’ve worked with / for to freely expose the work product that I’ve done while working with them. How you choose to manage this is up to you; I feel as if this solution works best–for me. This allows me to maintain control over who is seeing what, and when.
As always, your mileage may vary, and “it depends” on what will work for you.
What About That Login Page?
Great question! I’m glad you asked.
I spent a fair amount of time searching for the right solution–there are many, many out there and they range from “Wow, you really need to be an expert” to the equivalent of trying to translate hieroglyphics.
Then, I found what may have been the easiest solution to meet my needs. The only catch is that you will need to have access to your PHPMyAdmin / MySQL database so you can add usernames and passwords, but if you’re able to build this out, building out the ability to manage users should not be too difficult.
I found the PHP Loging Script Tutorial at PHP Easy Step. I found that building my pages took me less than an hour and that the only thing extra I needed to do was to make sure that you re checking for an active session on each page so that users cannot deep link to any of your samples without you being aware of it. That code is:
< ?
session_start();
if(!session_is_registered(myusername)){
header(”YOUR LOGIN PAGE HERE”);
}
?>
Of course, you do not need to use your login page upon a failure, you can just throw users to any page or other website that you’d like.
This concludes my lessons learned–hopefully you are able to find these useful. I’m more than willing to help you put together a login/password page in the event you find yourself hitting brick walls.
Posted in Presentations, Resumes, User Experience Design |
