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Finally got my new product design portfolio together.(tre.gg)
6 years ago from Tregg Frank, Product Designer
Nathan N, 6 years ago
It depends on two things. One, how quickly you can get a static site designed/coded. Two, how quickly you can integrate into CMS of your choice. For me it took about a weekend to fully design and code my portfolio, and another couple days to integrate it with GH pages and Jekyll (both were new to me at the time).
M. de Winter, 6 years ago How was your prior knowledge about HTML/CSS/Javascript? The site works pretty darn good, so I think you're pretty competent when designing with such care (I've read your cases) and also being able to code this in a weekend. Nice job sir.
Thanks for the compliment! I have about two years experience with HTML/CSS/JS but not a whole lot of web development experience. I mostly use it for simple things.
Jon Parkinson, 6 years ago
True. I've been looking into the CMS Cargo Collective 2. Pretty flexible (and no code).
Also, what about content? I'm slightly more worried about the best way to show my UX work, a consistent way to display UI work and its endless device views, and navigating the minefield of ways to write (coherently) about the thought process of a project. The amount of detail @Tregg Frank goes into per-project is impressive, and to do that across all projects must of taken forever.
If I rephrase the question - What do you think is the best way to document your work and the finished result in a portfolio format?
Tregg Frank, 6 years ago
Yeah, so like my other comment says, most of my content was already written in case study PDFs at the end of each project. That's my big tip: document as you go because it's hard to go back and write. That's obviously hard to fix retroactively haha.
Cargo Collective is pretty great! I used them for my first portfolio. They had a DNS issue where my site was being blocked by campus firewalls when I parked my domain there. But actually making the sites is great and I'm sure that's fixed now.
So yeah, the best way to document your work in a case study is to think of it like telling a story. Take pictures of all your research if you can (I forget to do this sometimes and end up with sections of me describing it without much to show) and create a narrative arch. Whats' the task, the problem, and the timeline? Why does this matter? What did you do to solve the problem? Did you change anything? Did the product grow or shift in making it? Where did you end up? What would you do next?
First of all, thank you so much! That means a ton.
This took me way too long. Like, waaay too long. Because I pivoted 2 times. The real push to get it done was this week. I lost my internship due to financial issues at the company so I suddenly had a lot of time to burn. I'd say total this is about 80 hours of work, not including the projects themselves. Most of the case study content was already written, but piecing it together took a long time as well.
Most of the time was spent on the front end design and iterating on it, and then implementing Kirby CMS on the back end. I used Webflow for the front end, so I also was learning a ton about that platform while making this. It ended up being a great way to learn some new skills.
It DOES take time, but there's definitely smarter ways to work. I've set myself up for a long time with this one. The back end content will be much easier to move around to new designs as I grow because, well, it's Kirby CMS and it's super flexible.
Nice! Super comprehensive. Really get a feel of the depth you go into. Hard to show and nice to see.
Out of interest, how long did it take you to make or update? I need to update my portfolio, but worried its going to take SOOO long to do. Be interested to hear about how to tackled it while in work or on your weekends etc.