How to describe your design work in a portfolio or presentation (thread below)
Describe the problem you set out to solve.
Explain the things that made this problem interesting or challenging—what was the space of options? What were the constraints you were forced to balance?
(If you want to go more in-depth), show other variants you tried along the way, and why they didn’t quite work for you.
Explain why you went with the final solution you chose.
(If possible to share), show the the measurable outcomes of your solution on the problem, whether quantitative or qualitative.
(If you want to be comprehensive), explain the limitations of your final solution and what you'd do if you had infinite time or resources.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
As someone who works in data, I always joke to my friends that I have incredibly poor data visibility on how my book is doing. I don't know how many copies have sold, for example. I don't know how many people have read it.
Most importantly, I don't know how many people found it *useful* and what is the ratio of readers who found it useful versus not, which are the metrics I most care about!
(And if not useful, I'd like to know why, so I can learn something in the process.)
What I have to go on are anecdotes. I'm grateful for each person who has reached out about my book over the years. It floods me with warmth whenever someone tells me they picked it up after a promotion, or when their whole team read it, or when they recommended it to a friend.
In 2023 I want to aim for more honesty and transparency.
It starts with me first: honesty towards myself. We all have self-deceptions. These defense mechanisms provide us comfort.
It struck me that true self-acceptance can't come without true self-honesty.
Examples where I am not fully honest with myself:
1. Brushing aside, judging or justifying my feelings 2. Self-censoring opinions 3. Not proactively asking for feedback 4. Externalizing problems rather than seeing my role in them 5. Avoiding watching myself talk
Of course I have been on the other extreme too--too much self-judgement of the above, feeling guilty for feeling this or doing that.
But judgement is not honesty.
Honesty is curiosity and then awareness, acknowledgement, and accountability. Not 'good' / 'bad' labels.