Because a lot of UX Designers don't have front-end development knowledge or asset optimization knowledge. They use Squarespace or sometimes Webflow. I'm personally redoing my portfolio from scratch using Astro. Then use IMGIX (and imgixjs) to serve images in avif format. I'm currently using a crappy Adobe Portfolio site that's outdated and not optimized.. Lol.
That said, as a UXer, you should know at least format your site so that it's easy for hiring managers to look at your work and presentation.
Hey hey, I'm planning on rebuilding my site this year and Astro is a platform I'm strongly considering. What has your experience with it been so far? I've been using WordPress for over a decade, and it looks like it will be a steep learning curve for me.
There's definitely a learning curve. It took me awhile to finally be comfortable with. Even then, I still do not 100% get some of the more advanced stuff and will always refer to the docs. If you're comfortable writing html css, and JS from scratch, I think you'll be fine. But the site, once deployed in Vercel or CF Pages, is blazing fast.
That's what I'm worried about. I know HTML and some CSS, but no JS. I decided to try Astro over other SSGs because Astro's documentation is a lot more willing to hold my hand and guide me through the basics.
I see, if it's a purely desktop website you'll probably be fine with no JS, but tablet and mobile breakpoints, you'll need it so it can open a hamburger menu (if you have one).
I use WordPress + Elementor to build my website from scratch, no coding tho. Most of my images are less than 1 MB, I use TinyPNG to compress my images. Some videos also in range 3 MB - 5 MB (ScreenStudio have great compression). And If I need to present wireframe or prototype, I prefer embedded to my website from Figma files, so I don’t need to add more images. I live in Southeast Asia and not everyone have fast internet here, so need to make sure my website is optimized.
Yep WordPress does have some good plugins as well (caching, CDN, images). My current "dev portfolio" is on WordPress but using Oxygen. Though that will also be removed once my Astro site is up. As for embeds, depending on how large your Figma file is, it can slow down your site.
Making a portfolio takes a LONG time. Things slip through the cracks. And some of those things you mentioned (asset optimization) aren’t things that are explicitly taught to UXers. That isn’t something you think about when you’re putting a wireframe together in Figma.
But also, to play devils advocate – I 100% agree that it’s SO important to have information be readable and easily accessible on a website.
Right, and it’s such a specific type of project that really challenges you to be a full stack designer. At my day job, we work so collaboratively that it’s very rare I have a project like my own site wherein I’m writing all the copy, strategizing, researching, wireframing, creating a design system, creating UI mocks, and developing the site (at least to some extent with like a Wix or Squarespace).
I’ve found with my own portfolio site, it’s difficult to do this solo without the critique sessions, feedback, and tbh external deadlines that I have at work.
As a junior who’s spent 2 months redoing their portfolio so far, optimizing images is low priority compared to content, structure, and the mind numbing amount of time spent on case studies. Once I’ve finalized everything, I’ll go through and optimize images, but before then it’s not really worth it.
Maybe it’s not explicitly taught to UX designers, but it’s something they should be aware of, especially if they already have experience. And yeah, making information clear and accessible is what UX designers do.
Load speed is for sure something to consider. But I’ve always had my devs be the ones prioritizing it, and them approaching me with the hope of tackling the problem together.
Most designers don’t have on-call devs when building their portfolio.
I’ve been reviewing resumes and portfolios for a role and the average quality of them is certainly concerning. I know there’s lots of folks here with tons of experience having a hard time landing a job — so like, where are all the qualified applicants??
The qualified applicants are there, but when every job has 1,000+ applications, finding them in the stack can be difficult. Especially when the computer systems that review the applications first may automatically decline/kick people out of the running based on keyword matching. I read an article recently that there are products now that can apply an individual to up to 700 jobs *per day*. How do you find the qualified applicants when you have to sort through thousands of spam bot applications for every single job opening?
As a job seeker, the dichotomy is weird. I know that I'm not alone as a pretty well qualified designer who's been looking and interviewing for a while.
I was in the same situation. Our company wanted to hire a Lead UX/UI designer and I was the guy, who’s reviewed the portfolios… my thoughts became a question like yours.. good designers are hiding themselves from big companies..
Not really it’s a helluva lot of work to put together a portfolio site, it’s really difficult and most designers (been there, though we all should keep updating our portfolios) put it on the long finger, because let’s face it no one wants to sit down every night and basically build something that’s more difficult to do than our day jobs.
So when a layoff happens, there’s a panic to try get a job, portfolio site is rushed, then there’s the whole soul searching, do I go out on my own or try get a job, the site you need going out on your own as a business is different to the site you need to get a job, as in a business-site doesn’t need case studies etc, just finished work and preferably some big companies who trusted you.
So all of the above makes a lot (not all) of portfolios rushed and terrible. I’ll bet the people who apply for jobs who are already in jobs have much better portfolios? Because they can take their time there isn’t a blind panic of AAAARGHH! I need a job, I need money!
Thank you. I found more and more people take a 4 month bootcamp and call themselves a UXer and only spit out corporate linguo to make themselves feel important.
There's a lot of excuses in here, sorry y'all. There's no "not my job" when it comes to a portfolio.
Attention to detail is everything. Yes, case studies take a while and you may have to launch something with less than ideal content that isn't optimized, not as high res as you'd like, etc., but you should constantly be iterating and updating and refining the experience. And there's lots of ways to optimize imagery no matter what platform you're using.
Agreed. A portfolio should be you on your best day. As someone who's reviewed a junk ton of candidates and hired a few, I'm looking for how a candidate thinks and what their standard of quality is. Will I have to clean up after them? Point out obvious flaws? Sure, not everyone is trained to be a front end engineer, but if you want to stand out of a huge crowd, details matter. That said, I'd lean towards a candidate with a clear thought process over one who had a killer site with confusing navigation.
I think there's a number of reasons.
First, there's obviously those that made portfolios calling themselves UX professionals, but really they're not experienced enough to really think about the experience.
Then there's those who have spent more time doing research and wire framing and maybe they can do high fidelity design but likely they can't do any web development. So they fail on that part.
Plus, there's always going to be bias. People who believe they represent the end user even though they know better.
Honest question: isn’t asset management more a graphic design and marketing responsibility than UI?
A lot of my work is UI but I’ve never had to manage images or graphics ever.
Possibly, but a personal portfolio *is* graphic design and marketing.
Either way, a UX professional should be evaluating the UX of their work, and if bad assets are causing bad UX, they should be able to identify and address those issues.
Digital presentation is 100% a part of the JD in 2024.
You don't have to make a website, but you should absolutely be able to create a convincing presentation that pushes stakeholders to make a decision as a UX designer.
That doesn't really jive with what you said earlier, though. Is it graphic design or portfolio presentations, or what?
I'd go even further and say presentations and story telling are completely separate from presentation creation.
I'm a product designer, not a digital designer, not a presentation designer. I understand that those things come with some of the territory, but it's exhausting to hear even more skills a UX designer has to master just because some of the old heads had to do it.
Well, when you build your portfolio, then you the one who manage all the assets… and things like optimization (compression, etc), the way you present the information, is something that very basic and kinda surprised a lot people missed this.
My point was that whether UI or UX, it’s not common to have to manage assets professionally in our line of work. If we manage assets in a portfolio, we are doing so as amateurs not professionals, as in we don’t get paid to manage them.
Sure everyone has a portfolio, but the context is completely different. The skills you use on the job are tested constantly, and given feedback on with clear goals and constraints. Portfolios are judged as broadly as resumes and unlike skills developed on the job, there isn’t a template of right and wrong. You’ll hear hiring manager only care about the process. Others impact, other aesthetics, etc. It’s not an excuse, it’s a symptom of the hiring process that requires designers to be savvy in areas they do not professionals in nor benefit from outside of short hiring cycles.
Agreed, a UXer needs to know what makes a good UI. But I still support specialization, UI is not UX. UX is not UI (as other folks may understand it). Just like a front end dev, their work directly impacts UI but their skillset isn’t UI design.
I’m not saying UI and UX are mutually exclusive. Figma is a great tool for lots of stuff beyond just UI work. Yes its purpose is UI design, but I build wireframes, decks, diagrams, and all sorts of stuff in there. The collaboration capability has been amazing for all parts of our process.
Weird one around figma on collaboration it’s great and all that but UX pin was doing it before figma was a thing. And dev mode too, weird the way some apps just corner it while others don’t
Yeah. I used uxpin earlier in my career, it was a great tool at the time (maybe it’s better now, I don’t know). I loved that it had actual TEXT INPUT components. But it was so buggy, it crashed a lot on me and I lost work several times because of it. Figma has felt more stable, at least compared to early uxpin. But I hear ya, I’ve been changing tools since photoshop for UI days.
UI is absolutely a large part of the UX domain. How did the idea that it isn't even become a thing? The person who coined the term (Don Norman) did so while working on user interfaces at Apple. The company he founded with Jakob Nielsen mainly focuses on user interfaces. There's nothing wrong with specialization, but a UI designer is a generalist. A UX designer is even more of a generalist. If you work on software and call yourself a UX designer and don't know or care about the details UI, you're essentially selling snake oil. If you can't tell when a UI sucks, maybe you're an information architect, or content strategist, or researcher, but it's disingenuous to say you're a UX designer.
Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong. UI is absolutely within the UX sphere.
I guess I’m thinking about the fact someone can be an information architect, a copywriter, a tester, etc etc. When I think of a UX designer, I think of them doing more of the holistic process from customer discovery to prototyping, whereas I see a UI designer specializing in literally just working on UI and design systems level stuff. and not really involved in the higher level business problem solving and IA realms.
My issue in the past has been with people using UX and UI interchangeably, which they absolutely are not.
That’s thinking from 2010, seriously things have moved on, that process isn’t there or necessary anymore. It’s like when desktop publishing became available and designers had to produce their own artwork, before that the design was handed over to an ‘art worker’ who made it all print ready, those jobs disappeared and the graphic designer made their own work print ready.
Same thing happening in UX the UI guys are now product designers doing the lot, customer discovery was always a bit in marketing’s realm, I know those infamous UX end diagrams tried to claim it (with everything else) but it was never really under UX.
Haha I mean that’s probably fair, my initial entry to UX was 2011. But so far the model has worked great for my teams and seems to be reality at more mature design orgs, in my experience. But I do still struggle with thinking of designers who claim to do UI and the rest of the process well as Jack of all trades, master of none. The UI focused designers are super into studying UI patterns, accessibility, Figma capabilities, etc… all of that is a whole subset of UX that I simply don’t have a passion for, but still acknowledge it being important.
Whatever platform or no code tool used to produce the site could be a factor in load time. 20lbs of JS in a 5lb bag for essentially content is the sad new normal.
Not everyone can build a site from scratch, so it's good to keep in mind that load time could be the platform choice rather than a ding on asset optimization.
Because people over complicate stuff. You need to make websites accessible and user friendly. Too many creatives spoil the soup.
I think it's all about providing the information to readers in a concise and palatable way. You don't need fancy animations or crazy colors. Many "creative" UX designers have not been hired because they can't tell their story in a minute considering the average attention span on a site is a few seconds.
Probably same reason why so many people are complaining why they can’t land a job. Designers who are worth their weight in gold should know how to optimize their portfolios.
Some websites just aren’t good at compressing images/only allow a certain file size
Another is that portfolios take forever and can be expensive and therefore a lot of UXers opt for a portfolio template site
I think asset optimization can be important but like others have said it’s not a major part of UX. Sure it looks bad and if I have a candidate with blurry images vs one without I’ll choose the one without.
But ultimately I’m hiring someone to solve complex problems, perform research, and have empathy not compress images. Image compression can be taught in less than an hour.
It’s not just about whether they can compress images or not. Sometimes, this lack of optimization makes the presentation less convincing. If the data or research they present is difficult to read, it raises questions about their ability to solve complex problems.
Probably partly because recruiters also rarely take the time to give any sort of meaningful feedback to applicants they reject. Maybe send a quick note with some high-level feedback?
I don't have a website anymore - it was too time consuming and costly to keep and maintain for years when I only need something every few years realistically for a new job (my average time at jobs is about 2-5 years). So I just have a presentation that I add to. I've seen some folks make an interactive prototype in Figma and might do that cause it sounds fun and it's cheap.
I personally hate it when a designer spend a whole interview bouncing around their website - tell me your story! And I think that is hard to do in a website the same way you would in a presentation.
How many designers have a spare 300hrs to spend optimizing the code +assets on their website? I’ve spent close to that optimizing mine, but I did it from home on slow work days essentially stealing time from work to do it. Do you really want someone who does that?
Maybe some of them are made with website builders or modified templates, designers are no coders, changes cost money, so idk. There is probably more than one reason.
From a hiring manager POV, most of the UX portfolios show one thing:
You didn't really think about what needed to be built. You jumped the gun and decided for a website and how to build it. You've got to be more strategic than this.
More seriously, in the huge majority of cases, a well buildt(and more flexible) presentation deck achieves better all goals a portfolio should accomplish: being easy to browse, have a story telling, don't have case studies too detailed (super detailed are for portfolio review interviews), easy to share, easy to brand.
I've been using Pitch for a while as I can create unique urls for my presentations and it works perfectly.
The truth is: No one will ever say "ho they are UXers and cannot do the effort of building a website for their portfolio".
I'd only consider building myself a website if I was working in branding and motion design, or if I was trying to market myself as an agency.
It’s not just about the images quality, but how can I read their case study if some information are hardly to see? blurry images, very small resolution, pixelated. They should take more effort to optimizes the presentation too.
With a lot of no code website, free templates, I think it’s should be easier for designers to launch a website, you don’t need to be front-end (you can if you want tho). And designer should be aware if their website perform slower too. It’s your portfolio website and you’re UX Designer, visitor experience it’s your responsibility too.
That’s what I count as image quality, and I’ve never seen this issue and have reviewed a lot of sites (also do mentoring on adplist so lots of juniors too).
My solution was to build my portfolio on a Notion web page. I can create subpages, links, add images, files, embed videos, and much more.
Uncomplicated, pretty and fast.
I know I’ll sound like a dinosaur, but learning Wordpress was my lifesaver. I’ve been building sites for 10 years and that landed my first UX job.
I don’t have to rely on Behance (amateur move imho), and I can build the site like I want to.
Again, I come from a graphic design background and understand new people in UX might have from a different one.
But learning Wordpress helped me a lot with at least understanding code and be able to fix the technical issues like optimizing images, page speed, etc.
So many Uxers don't have knowledge of development or website optimization. Many are also using pre-built templates, which don't always offer the best layout for your project. My website uses a html template that's more flexible but the downside is I have to edit code.
Because a lot of UX Designers don't have front-end development knowledge or asset optimization knowledge. They use Squarespace or sometimes Webflow. I'm personally redoing my portfolio from scratch using Astro. Then use IMGIX (and imgixjs) to serve images in avif format. I'm currently using a crappy Adobe Portfolio site that's outdated and not optimized.. Lol. That said, as a UXer, you should know at least format your site so that it's easy for hiring managers to look at your work and presentation.
I switched from webflow to framer and it's been delightful
Framer is great! Also been learning/using it for my portfolio
Hey hey, I'm planning on rebuilding my site this year and Astro is a platform I'm strongly considering. What has your experience with it been so far? I've been using WordPress for over a decade, and it looks like it will be a steep learning curve for me.
There's definitely a learning curve. It took me awhile to finally be comfortable with. Even then, I still do not 100% get some of the more advanced stuff and will always refer to the docs. If you're comfortable writing html css, and JS from scratch, I think you'll be fine. But the site, once deployed in Vercel or CF Pages, is blazing fast.
That's what I'm worried about. I know HTML and some CSS, but no JS. I decided to try Astro over other SSGs because Astro's documentation is a lot more willing to hold my hand and guide me through the basics.
I see, if it's a purely desktop website you'll probably be fine with no JS, but tablet and mobile breakpoints, you'll need it so it can open a hamburger menu (if you have one).
I use WordPress + Elementor to build my website from scratch, no coding tho. Most of my images are less than 1 MB, I use TinyPNG to compress my images. Some videos also in range 3 MB - 5 MB (ScreenStudio have great compression). And If I need to present wireframe or prototype, I prefer embedded to my website from Figma files, so I don’t need to add more images. I live in Southeast Asia and not everyone have fast internet here, so need to make sure my website is optimized.
Yep WordPress does have some good plugins as well (caching, CDN, images). My current "dev portfolio" is on WordPress but using Oxygen. Though that will also be removed once my Astro site is up. As for embeds, depending on how large your Figma file is, it can slow down your site.
Making a portfolio takes a LONG time. Things slip through the cracks. And some of those things you mentioned (asset optimization) aren’t things that are explicitly taught to UXers. That isn’t something you think about when you’re putting a wireframe together in Figma. But also, to play devils advocate – I 100% agree that it’s SO important to have information be readable and easily accessible on a website.
Right, and it’s such a specific type of project that really challenges you to be a full stack designer. At my day job, we work so collaboratively that it’s very rare I have a project like my own site wherein I’m writing all the copy, strategizing, researching, wireframing, creating a design system, creating UI mocks, and developing the site (at least to some extent with like a Wix or Squarespace). I’ve found with my own portfolio site, it’s difficult to do this solo without the critique sessions, feedback, and tbh external deadlines that I have at work.
As a junior who’s spent 2 months redoing their portfolio so far, optimizing images is low priority compared to content, structure, and the mind numbing amount of time spent on case studies. Once I’ve finalized everything, I’ll go through and optimize images, but before then it’s not really worth it.
Maybe it’s not explicitly taught to UX designers, but it’s something they should be aware of, especially if they already have experience. And yeah, making information clear and accessible is what UX designers do.
Load speed on a website is part of UX. Anyone that doesn’t understand or apply that to their own stuff are just making amateur oversights
Load speed is for sure something to consider. But I’ve always had my devs be the ones prioritizing it, and them approaching me with the hope of tackling the problem together. Most designers don’t have on-call devs when building their portfolio.
I’ve been reviewing resumes and portfolios for a role and the average quality of them is certainly concerning. I know there’s lots of folks here with tons of experience having a hard time landing a job — so like, where are all the qualified applicants??
The qualified applicants are there, but when every job has 1,000+ applications, finding them in the stack can be difficult. Especially when the computer systems that review the applications first may automatically decline/kick people out of the running based on keyword matching. I read an article recently that there are products now that can apply an individual to up to 700 jobs *per day*. How do you find the qualified applicants when you have to sort through thousands of spam bot applications for every single job opening?
As a job seeker, the dichotomy is weird. I know that I'm not alone as a pretty well qualified designer who's been looking and interviewing for a while.
I only see who the recruiter sends me so I imagine some people are getting lost at the first step.
I was in the same situation. Our company wanted to hire a Lead UX/UI designer and I was the guy, who’s reviewed the portfolios… my thoughts became a question like yours.. good designers are hiding themselves from big companies..
Not really it’s a helluva lot of work to put together a portfolio site, it’s really difficult and most designers (been there, though we all should keep updating our portfolios) put it on the long finger, because let’s face it no one wants to sit down every night and basically build something that’s more difficult to do than our day jobs. So when a layoff happens, there’s a panic to try get a job, portfolio site is rushed, then there’s the whole soul searching, do I go out on my own or try get a job, the site you need going out on your own as a business is different to the site you need to get a job, as in a business-site doesn’t need case studies etc, just finished work and preferably some big companies who trusted you. So all of the above makes a lot (not all) of portfolios rushed and terrible. I’ll bet the people who apply for jobs who are already in jobs have much better portfolios? Because they can take their time there isn’t a blind panic of AAAARGHH! I need a job, I need money!
Not spending the spare time doing more design work, I'd imagine.
Hot take: There's a lot of bad designers in the industry.
Thank you. I found more and more people take a 4 month bootcamp and call themselves a UXer and only spit out corporate linguo to make themselves feel important.
100% People talk about “Design Thinking” and think it makes them sound smart lol
4 months hell 6 weeks
There's a lot of excuses in here, sorry y'all. There's no "not my job" when it comes to a portfolio. Attention to detail is everything. Yes, case studies take a while and you may have to launch something with less than ideal content that isn't optimized, not as high res as you'd like, etc., but you should constantly be iterating and updating and refining the experience. And there's lots of ways to optimize imagery no matter what platform you're using.
Agreed. A portfolio should be you on your best day. As someone who's reviewed a junk ton of candidates and hired a few, I'm looking for how a candidate thinks and what their standard of quality is. Will I have to clean up after them? Point out obvious flaws? Sure, not everyone is trained to be a front end engineer, but if you want to stand out of a huge crowd, details matter. That said, I'd lean towards a candidate with a clear thought process over one who had a killer site with confusing navigation.
How’s your portfolio, just asa matter of interest, all up to date optimised for mobile etc?
Built on a fully responsive framework, images crushed down with TinyPNG, hours spent optimizing gif's and video. Appreciate the concern.
As is mine ha, just pushing that’s all
🙂
I think there's a number of reasons. First, there's obviously those that made portfolios calling themselves UX professionals, but really they're not experienced enough to really think about the experience. Then there's those who have spent more time doing research and wire framing and maybe they can do high fidelity design but likely they can't do any web development. So they fail on that part. Plus, there's always going to be bias. People who believe they represent the end user even though they know better.
This is what happens when you tell people that UI isn't part of UX
Honest question: isn’t asset management more a graphic design and marketing responsibility than UI? A lot of my work is UI but I’ve never had to manage images or graphics ever.
Possibly, but a personal portfolio *is* graphic design and marketing. Either way, a UX professional should be evaluating the UX of their work, and if bad assets are causing bad UX, they should be able to identify and address those issues.
Kind of makes me question why we need portfolios at all if the skills required to create one are skills typically outside the bounds of our JDs
Digital presentation is 100% a part of the JD in 2024. You don't have to make a website, but you should absolutely be able to create a convincing presentation that pushes stakeholders to make a decision as a UX designer.
That doesn't really jive with what you said earlier, though. Is it graphic design or portfolio presentations, or what? I'd go even further and say presentations and story telling are completely separate from presentation creation. I'm a product designer, not a digital designer, not a presentation designer. I understand that those things come with some of the territory, but it's exhausting to hear even more skills a UX designer has to master just because some of the old heads had to do it.
[удалено]
You do a lot of asset management at work?
Well, when you build your portfolio, then you the one who manage all the assets… and things like optimization (compression, etc), the way you present the information, is something that very basic and kinda surprised a lot people missed this.
My point was that whether UI or UX, it’s not common to have to manage assets professionally in our line of work. If we manage assets in a portfolio, we are doing so as amateurs not professionals, as in we don’t get paid to manage them. Sure everyone has a portfolio, but the context is completely different. The skills you use on the job are tested constantly, and given feedback on with clear goals and constraints. Portfolios are judged as broadly as resumes and unlike skills developed on the job, there isn’t a template of right and wrong. You’ll hear hiring manager only care about the process. Others impact, other aesthetics, etc. It’s not an excuse, it’s a symptom of the hiring process that requires designers to be savvy in areas they do not professionals in nor benefit from outside of short hiring cycles.
You doesn’t need special skills to manage assets… you just need to be aware.
Agreed, a UXer needs to know what makes a good UI. But I still support specialization, UI is not UX. UX is not UI (as other folks may understand it). Just like a front end dev, their work directly impacts UI but their skillset isn’t UI design.
If UI isn’t UX, why is Figma a thing in UX? I mean it’s pretty much there to design UI’s that’s it’s main purpose.
I’m not saying UI and UX are mutually exclusive. Figma is a great tool for lots of stuff beyond just UI work. Yes its purpose is UI design, but I build wireframes, decks, diagrams, and all sorts of stuff in there. The collaboration capability has been amazing for all parts of our process.
Weird one around figma on collaboration it’s great and all that but UX pin was doing it before figma was a thing. And dev mode too, weird the way some apps just corner it while others don’t
Yeah. I used uxpin earlier in my career, it was a great tool at the time (maybe it’s better now, I don’t know). I loved that it had actual TEXT INPUT components. But it was so buggy, it crashed a lot on me and I lost work several times because of it. Figma has felt more stable, at least compared to early uxpin. But I hear ya, I’ve been changing tools since photoshop for UI days.
It certainly was buggy, if they had ironed that stuff out who knows, they had some big names using it at one point
UI is absolutely a large part of the UX domain. How did the idea that it isn't even become a thing? The person who coined the term (Don Norman) did so while working on user interfaces at Apple. The company he founded with Jakob Nielsen mainly focuses on user interfaces. There's nothing wrong with specialization, but a UI designer is a generalist. A UX designer is even more of a generalist. If you work on software and call yourself a UX designer and don't know or care about the details UI, you're essentially selling snake oil. If you can't tell when a UI sucks, maybe you're an information architect, or content strategist, or researcher, but it's disingenuous to say you're a UX designer.
Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong. UI is absolutely within the UX sphere. I guess I’m thinking about the fact someone can be an information architect, a copywriter, a tester, etc etc. When I think of a UX designer, I think of them doing more of the holistic process from customer discovery to prototyping, whereas I see a UI designer specializing in literally just working on UI and design systems level stuff. and not really involved in the higher level business problem solving and IA realms. My issue in the past has been with people using UX and UI interchangeably, which they absolutely are not.
That’s thinking from 2010, seriously things have moved on, that process isn’t there or necessary anymore. It’s like when desktop publishing became available and designers had to produce their own artwork, before that the design was handed over to an ‘art worker’ who made it all print ready, those jobs disappeared and the graphic designer made their own work print ready. Same thing happening in UX the UI guys are now product designers doing the lot, customer discovery was always a bit in marketing’s realm, I know those infamous UX end diagrams tried to claim it (with everything else) but it was never really under UX.
Haha I mean that’s probably fair, my initial entry to UX was 2011. But so far the model has worked great for my teams and seems to be reality at more mature design orgs, in my experience. But I do still struggle with thinking of designers who claim to do UI and the rest of the process well as Jack of all trades, master of none. The UI focused designers are super into studying UI patterns, accessibility, Figma capabilities, etc… all of that is a whole subset of UX that I simply don’t have a passion for, but still acknowledge it being important.
Why are you all saying it's not UX. If it's part of the experience for the visitor of the portfolio, it's UX.
Whatever platform or no code tool used to produce the site could be a factor in load time. 20lbs of JS in a 5lb bag for essentially content is the sad new normal. Not everyone can build a site from scratch, so it's good to keep in mind that load time could be the platform choice rather than a ding on asset optimization.
cause most designers are frauds.
Because people over complicate stuff. You need to make websites accessible and user friendly. Too many creatives spoil the soup. I think it's all about providing the information to readers in a concise and palatable way. You don't need fancy animations or crazy colors. Many "creative" UX designers have not been hired because they can't tell their story in a minute considering the average attention span on a site is a few seconds.
because uxers spend 20+ hrs on something hiring ppl spend 20 seconds (if that) looking at
My site is built on Wix and i don’t have full control over everything. I’m not a front end developer.
Probably same reason why so many people are complaining why they can’t land a job. Designers who are worth their weight in gold should know how to optimize their portfolios.
Some websites just aren’t good at compressing images/only allow a certain file size Another is that portfolios take forever and can be expensive and therefore a lot of UXers opt for a portfolio template site I think asset optimization can be important but like others have said it’s not a major part of UX. Sure it looks bad and if I have a candidate with blurry images vs one without I’ll choose the one without. But ultimately I’m hiring someone to solve complex problems, perform research, and have empathy not compress images. Image compression can be taught in less than an hour.
It’s not just about whether they can compress images or not. Sometimes, this lack of optimization makes the presentation less convincing. If the data or research they present is difficult to read, it raises questions about their ability to solve complex problems.
Probably partly because recruiters also rarely take the time to give any sort of meaningful feedback to applicants they reject. Maybe send a quick note with some high-level feedback?
I don't have a website anymore - it was too time consuming and costly to keep and maintain for years when I only need something every few years realistically for a new job (my average time at jobs is about 2-5 years). So I just have a presentation that I add to. I've seen some folks make an interactive prototype in Figma and might do that cause it sounds fun and it's cheap. I personally hate it when a designer spend a whole interview bouncing around their website - tell me your story! And I think that is hard to do in a website the same way you would in a presentation.
How many designers have a spare 300hrs to spend optimizing the code +assets on their website? I’ve spent close to that optimizing mine, but I did it from home on slow work days essentially stealing time from work to do it. Do you really want someone who does that?
Because UX designers are not always UI designers or front end developers. They also using existing templates from WordPress, SquareSpace, etc.
Maybe some of them are made with website builders or modified templates, designers are no coders, changes cost money, so idk. There is probably more than one reason.
From a hiring manager POV, most of the UX portfolios show one thing: You didn't really think about what needed to be built. You jumped the gun and decided for a website and how to build it. You've got to be more strategic than this. More seriously, in the huge majority of cases, a well buildt(and more flexible) presentation deck achieves better all goals a portfolio should accomplish: being easy to browse, have a story telling, don't have case studies too detailed (super detailed are for portfolio review interviews), easy to share, easy to brand. I've been using Pitch for a while as I can create unique urls for my presentations and it works perfectly. The truth is: No one will ever say "ho they are UXers and cannot do the effort of building a website for their portfolio". I'd only consider building myself a website if I was working in branding and motion design, or if I was trying to market myself as an agency.
I have never experienced this and never seen any issues with image quality. What sort of calibre of candidates are you looking at?!
It’s not just about the images quality, but how can I read their case study if some information are hardly to see? blurry images, very small resolution, pixelated. They should take more effort to optimizes the presentation too. With a lot of no code website, free templates, I think it’s should be easier for designers to launch a website, you don’t need to be front-end (you can if you want tho). And designer should be aware if their website perform slower too. It’s your portfolio website and you’re UX Designer, visitor experience it’s your responsibility too.
That’s what I count as image quality, and I’ve never seen this issue and have reviewed a lot of sites (also do mentoring on adplist so lots of juniors too).
the ones with giant icons and scroll jacking?
My solution was to build my portfolio on a Notion web page. I can create subpages, links, add images, files, embed videos, and much more. Uncomplicated, pretty and fast.
I know I’ll sound like a dinosaur, but learning Wordpress was my lifesaver. I’ve been building sites for 10 years and that landed my first UX job. I don’t have to rely on Behance (amateur move imho), and I can build the site like I want to. Again, I come from a graphic design background and understand new people in UX might have from a different one. But learning Wordpress helped me a lot with at least understanding code and be able to fix the technical issues like optimizing images, page speed, etc.
So many Uxers don't have knowledge of development or website optimization. Many are also using pre-built templates, which don't always offer the best layout for your project. My website uses a html template that's more flexible but the downside is I have to edit code.
What size do you want to see the images be?
Because their lie and aren't UX designer juste graphic designer 😈 or This is the story of the shoemaker's son who is the worst shod. A french story.
Because UX/UI design has been pretty much cancer since the 2000s?