The UX Portfolio – What makes the client tick..

I imagine it must be hard for an experienced designer to hear from a recruiter that you need to jazz up your portfolio, when you’re the ones who’ve actually done the work! I find it a little hard to say sometimes, but it is the client that tells us what they look for, we’re the ones that have these conversations and know what the client is looking for, so do our best to offer as much guidance as we can.

I did come across an article that was a really good read for me that comes direct from a client, it gives you an insight to what clients look for in a UX portfolio when they’re interviewing. We offer advice here on how to make your portfolio appealing to clients - different clients in different verticals like different things which doesn’t exactly help you as a candidate, but hopefully this article can provide a good starting point.

http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/wow-me-with-your-ux-portfolio.html

If you feel you need some guidance on putting together an updated portfolio, we’re more than happy to help. It would be great to hear from you as a candidate and find out what you find the biggest hurdles when putting together work examples. Equally, clients that can pass on any nuggets of information that you feel could help candidates would be much appreciated.

Please feel free to discuss further with Sukhi Kang

UX Recruitment - The candidate perspective

..Do to others as you would have them do to you..

I’m pretty sure we’ve all experienced it, you get calls at the most inconvenient time. You get a barrage of emails and messages when they are just not relevant!

In this week’s discussion, I’m really keen to try and tap into the market and see how UX candidates prefer to communicate best. Working in the UX space is different to other areas, you’re not always able to drop everything to answer the phone (sometimes you are, but you just don’t want to!). You may be in workshops all morning, so the last thing you want to do on your lunch break is speak to 15 different people asking you the same question whilst you tuck into your KFC.

As a UX professional, freelance or permanent, it would be brilliant to hear from you guys and let us know what the preference is for communication. I hate being bombarded when it’s not necessary, but when my car insurance or phone contract is up for renewal I like to use the internet and use online assistance, that’s my personal preference.

What works best for you the candidate when you want to know about the market activity? And equally, what annoys you most!!

Please contact Sukhi to discuss further.

UX Open Days - a good idea to embrace?

A certain software firm we work with in France have just had the genius idea of holding a ‘Usability Week’ – a series of open days for other company staff members to pop their heads into the UX department and learn a little more about what goes on in there. Kind of like a science department open day at school, for business students to marvel at.

As well as presentations, demonstrations, talks and titbits they focused on explaining elements of user experience such as responsive design across platforms, persona development and accessibility, and why they are integral to the success of the businesses’ internal and customer-facing digital output.

I wonder if something like this should be rolled out by more firms? It seems like a great idea to raise awareness and most of all, show off how important UX is!

Have you gone down the same route in your firm? Are you planning to? Would you try to do this on lunch times or would you prefer to have walk in sessions throughout the day so employees can see your team members hard at work? Keen to hear your thoughts on this topic!

 

Please contact Sam.Emmett@ic-creative.co.uk.