Cornell Bowers College of Computing and Information Science

Personal Web Portfolios

 

What is a Portfolio?

The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English defines "Portfolio" as “A set of pieces of creative work intended to demonstrate a person’s ability to a potential employer.” 

How Do I Know If I Need a Personal Webpage Portfolio?

Many design positions as well as UI/UX positions require portfolios and you will often find a request for one within the job description.

How Do I Create a Portfolio for Job Seeking Purposes?

 A guide to get you started by Rachel Graham from Bentley University.

Tips, suggestions and alumni portfolio video 

Portfolio Development video from Nupur Kale '17 

Good Practices:

  • Logo: at the top of each page can be clicked on to bring back to home page
  • Your Name and Contact Information:  Make sure to include your contact information in several places to make you easily accessible to employers. Ensure icons and links are all clickable. Put your name on each page if possible and make it direct to your resume or contact information. Make it easy for a future employer to contact you.
  • Titles: Titles should clearly indicate what is important to employers. The titles of the paragraphs might be trends from job descriptions you are targeting.  Employers seeking human robot interaction might want someone with building empathy, prototypes, brainstorming and ideation, design and evaluation, skills. These could be titles for paragraphs on your portfolio 
  • Photos: Photos are important in web based portfolios. All photos should have captions because sometimes these are the only things an employer will read on the first pass.
    • Photos can be captioned to align with employer needs. Making them sortable by employer needs as well as your skills and experience makes it easier for the employer to find the skills you have.
  • Including a Next button at the bottom of the pages if it fits into your flow so that it might encourage employers to look at more.
  • Project Reports: Don't just cut and paste project reports to your portfolio. Write a brief summary of the project and link it to the project report. You can tailor the summary to highlight the skills each employer is looking for.
  • The Process: Document the project's process. Show your brainstorming, affinity diagrams, and initial wireframe sketches. Take photos even if the process seems to appear messy.
    • Employers want to see the evolution of the app as well as know you understand iteration and other parts of the workflow processes.
    • Break the process down into areas based on skills the employer is seeking. When describing the process tell about what you learned about teamwork, the differences in opinion, or other soft skills the employers are seeking (review job descriptions of employers you will be sending this to for clues) and how you worked through the process.
    • Insert a video about the process.
  • What the job description says: Pay attention to the job description; many state what they expect in a portfolio.
    • One employer recently stated in job description qualifications: "Your portfolio must demonstrate your design process, include but not limited to user research, wireframing, low fidelity prototyping and attention to visual design principles (layout, typography and information visualization)"  This employer made it easy to know what they were looking for in a portfolio.
    • Other job descriptions may not be so clear and you will need to determine how to best illustrate your skillset by analyzing the job description for what the employer is saying is most important to them.

Articles, Links and Tips for UX Portfolios:

An article of interest for those creating an online portfolio, even if for work not in the UX field. Some of the same priciples apply. Pro-guide to the Perfect UX Portfolio  

Rachel Graham from Bentley University put together a guide to get you started. 

Yu Qi - How my Portfolio was Designed and Built:  Read the story of how an IS MPS alumni built his portfolio. 

Click on the links below for some examples of portfolio design:

20 Beautiful UI & UX Designer Portfolios For Inspiration

Ten Portfolios Done Right

Several Articles on Portfolio Development

Free Portfolio Sites

15 Best Portfolio Websites for Designers

Easy Steps to Creating your Web Design Portfolio