A portfolio highlights your innovative design process and past work. The process of creating a UX design portfolio permits you to reflect on your skills as well as achievements. It simply means that creating a powerful UX portfolio is a true representation of your skills. Telling a powerful story, clear summaries, and quality work are some of the important things to keep in mind when creating a UX portfolio.
The common misunderstanding regarding a UX design portfolio is that they are merely made up of final UI designs and screenshots. Here, in this article, we have illustrated the thirteen effective ways to enhance your UX portfolio.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
- 1. Select A Suitable Font For UX Portfolio
- 2. Tell Your Powerful Story
- 3. Make It Visually Attractive
- 4. Write Clear Summaries
- 5. Add Internal Links
- 6. Pick Stunning Images For Your Case Studies
- 7. Use Videos On Your UX Portfolio
- 8. Think About Your Users
- 9. Be Truthful
- 10. Showcase What Makes You Unique
- 11. Optimize For Mobile Devices
- 12. Focus On Quality Over Quantity
- 13. Do Not Overshare
1. Select A Suitable Font For UX Portfolio
Choosing the proper font for your portfolio design defines how nicely your designs are perceived. It is adequate for a typeface to be clear and understandable, rather than unreadable. Sometimes, it looks distracting from the general communication goals of the design. If an individual needs to spend an additional three seconds to understand your content, then they may ignore your UX portfolio design.
As you use your own skills in choosing typefaces, you will create your own regulations regarding picking font type. There are no wrong or right answers, as many would like you to think. It is up to you to decide how you want the visitors to feel when they look at your UX portfolio.
Furthermore, Open Sans is one of the most famous web fonts on Google Fonts. You can use this font for both title and body text with many sans serif and serif fonts. Moreover, Roboto Slab is another popular font choice for portfolios by numerous designers. It has friendly curves that make it work well for both headers and body content.
There are various other modern-looking fonts available like Monsterrat, Playfair Display, Titillium Web, and many more.
2. Tell Your Powerful Story
A great story is about something the visitors found interesting or meaningful. It adds value to the topic. Carefully build a personal story that is emotionally attached to your visitors and clients.
Importantly, create and organize the list in the way you work. It might be a diary or a spreadsheet with outlines. You can use that data to make attractive stories for your portfolio website.
Furthermore, a good story is easy to understand. It is also described in a language that matches the way the targeted audience communicates. So, they are not required to spend time diagnosing. A clear story helps you to easily understand the ultimate lesson and summary.
3. Make It Visually Attractive
When you create a UX portfolio, you need to make it visually attractive. Right! There are various WordPress plugins available to create an eye-catching portfolio design to attract more visitors. Here, we recommend using Portfolio Designer for creating unique and responsive galleries on your website.
This plugin is the complete solution for developing gorgeous UX portfolios, and galleries into your WordPress website in any preferred layout. With this plugin, you can create a beautiful WordPress gallery in just a few minutes. It provides the four most famous layout styles like Grid, Masonry, Slider, and Justify to create a beautiful portfolio. Apart from this, the plugin provides 50+ predefined effects and animations to show your portfolio project titles, descriptions, links, and many more.
Using the Portfolio Designer WordPress plugin, you can create new custom post types with image, audio, or video thumbnails. It is also fit for using create new custom post types with image, audio, or video thumbnails. It is also fit for using your regular blog posts or any other custom post type posts like WooCommerce. Importantly, it is a completely responsive and mobile-friendly WordPress gallery plugin to showcase your photos and share them on various social media networks.
4. Write Clear Summaries
The summary is described as a short and sweet review of the main points about your portfolio or project work. Writing a good summary demonstrates that you truly understand a text, which helps you to communicate with your readers. A well-written summary is not an analysis of the text, but it is a condensed outline of the original work.
Furthermore, you can show a high-level summary of the projects on your home page. In addition to this, actively read your story and make important points you want to insert in your summary.
5. Add Internal Links
Generally, an internal link is a link that points to pages within the website however, an external link is a link to other websites. As a UX portfolio designer, you should clearly know the basics of internal linking to optimize your website.
For instance, you can include internal links at the end of each case study that permits users to the next case study. You can also add navigation like top to button. In this way, you can enhance the navigation on your UX portfolio website.
6. Pick Stunning Images For Your Case Studies
Case studies show your professional skill set. Cover images make all the difference, and the right product mockup is necessary. Every image you place on your UX portfolio website should be professional.
Moreover, if you do not include your goal in your case study, then readers will not understand what type of problem you are trying to accomplish. You can showcase this on the top of your case study, so readers instantly understand what you are trying to achieve.
In some cases, it is smart to insert the results at the starting of your project rather than at the end. This offers visitors a glance into what they are going to get out of reading your whole case study.
7. Use Videos On Your UX Portfolio
Video is an excellent way to showcase information engagingly. So, the biggest question is how you can use this in your portfolio? You can add a short twenty to thirty-second video on the introduction of your UX portfolio website.
In addition to this, on your portfolio website, you can create a stunning video gallery to gain more visitor’s attention. You can also give them a reason to stay around and view your work. One study found that approximately 81 percent of businesses use video as a marketing tool. Moreover, Cisco reported that by 2022 online videos make more than 82 percent of consumer internet traffic. It is 15 times higher than it was in 2017.
The great thing is that basically everyone has a decent video recorder on their smartphone. So whenever you are working on something interesting, you should try and make a short video just in case. You can even edit clips into a video using various video editing applications or software.
8. Think About Your Users
It is important to think about the users to enrich your UX portfolio. You can take some time and think about those who are browsing your portfolio. It is important to know what they want to see on your portfolio, how they feel when they visit your portfolio, and the action that you have to take to make your portfolio more user friendly.
Furthermore, you can also take the feedback from your users or clients. According to their reviews, you can change your portfolio and make it more attractive. It also helps you to gain more clients in your UX portfolio. Ultimately, it will boost your revenue.
9. Be Truthful
It is important to be trustworthy with your role and your responsibilities when developing your user experience portfolio.
In addition to this, sometimes we see a portfolio where the applicants say that they did a whole project on their own, and we know, through networks and such, that it is not correct. But it is fine to say that most of us work in a team.
10. Showcase What Makes You Unique
Almost all designers have something that makes them unique, and the things that make you unique help you stand out from your competitors. Sometimes, free time projects or hobbies can show your hidden skills. When you show your innovative and unique work, it will help you to attract more visitors to your UX portfolio.
Furthermore, it may be difficult to find out and understand the things that make you unique. Generally, individuals will describe others based on their personality, which shows how unique you are.
11. Optimize For Mobile Devices
In this digital world, mobile usage has increased. In addition to this, around 53.3% of worldwide internet usage takes place on mobile devices. That is the important reason to browse your portfolio on small screen devices like a smartphone or tablet. One research illustrates that around 56% of web traffic is mobile traffic in the US.
Sometimes, we have seen several portfolios from professional and talented people whose portfolios look eye-catching on bigger screens but spoil the grace on smaller screens. If users are browsing your portfolio on a small screen, then they may get less user experience. Use a fully responsive theme to make your UX portfolio website. And plan your data accordingly.
12. Focus On Quality Over Quantity
The quality of your creative work is much more important than the quantity of your creative work. It does not matter how many things you have, but the matter is the quality of the thing you have. Excellence comes when you properly balance quality with quantity, but quality plays a bigger role in it.
The visitors have around ten to fifteen minutes to go through your UX portfolio. So it is not even worth it to show more than ten case studies. Choose one or two of your effective case studies to tell more about yourself. Not each case study ought to be a deep dive.
Important Reading: Portfolio Design: Do’s and Don’ts
13. Do Not Overshare
Good communication is about understanding how much to share and when. Your portfolio should strike a balance between sharing enough detail on the issue you faced, your technique, and outcomes, whilst not detailing every meeting or conversation.
Generally, oversharing sometimes have a detrimental effect on your UX portfolio website. The most notable examples of oversharing are found on social media websites. You may have seen some people share their personal relationship problems, posting embarrassing photos, or sharing details about their juveniles. These people are usually posting multiple times each day. In addition to this, a study has illustrated that oversharing increases with age, research of 17 to 84-year-olds found more senior people are more likely to share data compared to their younger peers.
Final Verdict!
That is the end! We hope this article helps you to enrich your UX portfolio. Make your UX portfolio visually attractive with a stunning font style to gain more visitor’s attention. You can also write a clear summary and internal linking to enhance the user experience. Most importantly, focus on quality over quantity for your UX portfolio design.
Which of these tips would work well for your UX portfolio? Share your views in the comment section below.
All the best!
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