August 19, 2007 What’s in a portfolio?
Here’s something I’ve been pondering lately:
What does a portfolio look like for an information architect or an interaction designer? What sort of information should it contain, and in what media? How do you convey the “story” of an interaction that you designed, when an interaction is a narrative that may be different every time?
I get portfolios for graphics designers. “Here’s a poster, a layout, an icon, some graphics for a site that I designed.” And I get resumes for tech jobs. (In fact, I have one.) “I speak Java, Perl, Flex and SQL.” But how the heck are you supposed to impress anyone with sitemaps and Visio wireframes?
And if you do show examples of live sites, what if you didn’t design the visual layer? How do you tell people to focus on the right things that you’re trying to show?
I feel a little bit stuck on this at the moment. Any advice or examples out there???
As scary as it might seem, you might have to take a leap of faith that the person viewing the finished products knows that you were not necessarily directly involved with the skinning of the experience. If the portfolio is viewed by a person who has similar expertise in the field they can take a critical look at the experience from their professional perspective.
Of course if you are wary of the expertise and competency of the person reviewing the finished product portfolio, you could also view this is as a meta-challenge in information architecture. Try to figure out, knowing the information you need to structure, how to present to a layman what it is that you do. If you can design some kind of user experience that presents your field while also giving process examples, that could be viewed as a fairly significant accomplishment in information architecture. Through this you can demonstrate your abilities at overcoming challenges as well as your skills as an information architect.
Of course I could be missing some critical road block and perchance be falling short of your desired idea, but mayhap this is a start.
Comment by Ezra Willoby — August 20, 2007 @ 1:16 am
Hi Bri - I’m not familiar with Interaction Designing but here is a practical option from an outsider’s perspective. I think you can probably have in your portfolio a combination of paper deliverables (like Visio wireframes or your custom interaction/usability scenario depictions etc.) plus something in an electronic form. Of course the electronic media has an added advantage that it can express your accomplishments very clearly. I am not sure what you meant by examples of live sites but if you are talking about showing your work through the internet, sometimes it might not feasible esp when it’s a secure or an internal application. You could instead use prototypes developed by the designers which show the functionality/navigation of the pages (implemented using JavaScript etc). I am sure you must have a prototyping region where they must be staging these pages. About the visual layer, most probably the opposite person will understand that you are an Interaction Designer (because you must have specified it clearly) and will be focusing on the relevant (i.e., interaction and usability) aspects of your portfolio.
Good Luck!
Comment by Vamsi — August 20, 2007 @ 10:31 pm
Any place that is worth working at shouldn’t make a snap judgment based on a ‘portfolio’ anyway. The quality of your deliverable work is important, of course, but most important is how you think through design problems, how you solve them, how you collaborate and articulate.
I’ve seen portfolios that have IA deliverable examples, but then have a paragraph or two for each, explaining the problem that is solved by the deliverable.
Personally, I tend to decide who to interview based on resume and cover letter or previous knowledge/reputation/conversation, and then only get into seeing work examples in an interview.
Comment by Andrew Hinton — August 23, 2007 @ 12:17 pm