ship that dang portfolio, y'all
Newsletter #2 - February Update
Seriously, it’s time.
It’s a jungle out there.
There’s no time like now to define yourself and the work that you do.
I would like to help anyone having trouble with that!
I’m sliding into 2024 feeling pumped!
One of my “2024 Design New Years Resolutions” was to launch my portfolio and I’m happy to announce here it is…. www.howdyimkai.com 😁
After 15 months of transitioning into product design, I am satisfied enough to share it in a newsletter.
The marathon to build impactful projects while also designing the portfolio was grueling. Not to mention, I was also building Sprintfolio. I started to feel more and more like an imposter, guiding hundreds of designers on their portfolios without having finished mine.
I went from feeling like a total beginner and then needing to transform into an expert, overnight.
But, I didn’t have to, and you don’t need to either.
At the start of all this, I felt like a complete beginner, but as I picked up more UX principles, I began to see translatable skills from my past professional experiences.
The question was how do I display this connection?
It was super frustrating when I couldn’t figure it out – fast.
Juggling with building the projects, documenting the process of it, job searching, learning new skills, picking up freelance – when was I going to find the time to put together my story and my portfolio?
The problem was I was trying too many things at once, instead of breaking it down into manageable tasks.
The process often felt like mixing oil and water.
Mixing oil and water is typically considered impossible due to their chemical incompatibility. It's like shaking a salad dressing vigorously to combine oil and vinegar, which can be quite an energy-intensive process. My experiments were heavy handed and time/energy intensive.
Researchers at MIT discovered a more energy-efficient way to create a stable mixture. They achieved this by cooling a container of oil with a touch of soap and allowing water vapor from the air to gently combine with the oil's surface.
This makes sense right?
Soap + oil + steam condensation = less shaking, a much more efficient solution.
Think about this solution on a mass scale at a salad dressing factory.
Imagine how much money and energy they are saving.
This solution was only discovered in 2017 (source).
This a very good metaphor for explaining that while brute force effort can get things done, a strategic approach can save time and energy. Like a scientist, if you apply careful observation, strategy and timing, you can find a solution that achieves better outcomes.
So let’s break down my portfolio building journey…
I want to share my learning, so you can save time and energy.
I did 4 COMPLETE REBUILDS over the span of 15 months:
→ Started with Notion → I had serious customization limitations
→ Transferred to Webflow → I had issues with responsiveness
→ Remade it in Webflow (the figma to Webflow plugin was released) → I started hating the design at this point
→ Transferred to Framer → I wrangled with writing my case studies
And voila, here we are!
Key takeaways if I had to do this all over again
The sheer thought makes me shudder…
Document Everything: Write case studies as you go, snap photos, and save them. You'll thank yourself later when you're not searching desperately for that one image of you at the whiteboard. Starting in Notion was helpful, because I had blueprint content area that I could continuously update regardless of the website tool I finally ended up using. I wish I had just focused on content first instead of getting stuck in the different weeds of each tool.
Find the “North Star” to your motivation, and subsequently to your portfolio. Define your North Star — generally a visual output representing the "big picture" of how your work improves lives. It provides direction and motivation. This took me a while to figure out, so each rebuild felt like a new direction.
Embrace Ambiguity. Don’t let the tough questions of your case study stump you. You don’t have to be an expert all the time. You can conclude case studies where it ended and share your lessons from the experience. These are interesting ways to show people your problem solving skills.
My 2nd goal for my “2024 Design New Years Resolutions” was to support 50 designers in their 2024 goals. So far, I have 15 designers on my tracking list.
Every month I will ask them how it's going. Maybe there's progress or no progress. Either way that's totally okay. I'm just there to remind them, cheer them on or give them pause to re-evaluate.
It’s been a fun process, getting to meet so many designers from different backgrounds and stages in their career. It’s giving me a lot of insight into building the Sprintfolio community, and catering to their needs.
Occasionally, I’d like to spotlight one of them like, Boya.
Spotlight: Boya’s portfolio
First impressions:
I like the animation on the front page. It catches my attention, it tells a story and gives me a sense of Boya’s personality.
Her project cards are appealing, descriptive and consistent. The screens are clean, minimalistic and aesthetically appealing.
It includes delightful micro-interactions that make me smile.
An added bonus is that her resume highlights impactful KPIs at a glance. Head over to her website to take a closer look.
If you or someone you know would like to join my watch list, attend the Sprintfolio’s next networking mixer event. It’s a place for designers to check in and also get their professional materials peer reviewed.
We're almost finished with our first closed beta cohort! We had 30 designers participate and we have about a 50% completion rate. While better than the statistic I mention in my last newsletter that “96% of online courses don’t get finished,” we intend to do better.
It’s tough to ship out something that I’m not totally 100% happy with (far from it, tbh), but at Sprintfolio, we embody the principles of iterative design.
What have I learned from this process?
We’re not a school. We changed Sprintfolio's concept from "ai-powered school" to "AI-driven career accelerator." We don’t have lesson plans or tutorials. We’re completely hands-on. Our AI mentor, Lio is trained in UX principles and practices a socratic teaching method, which means he coaxes you to grapple the task at hand, and provides resources rather than just spits information out. Less AI hallucinations :)
Community support is crucial. When we ran design sprints with teams of 2, we had a completion rate of 50%. When ran a web3 sprint challenge with teams of 3, we had a 100% completion rate. A big challenge in our upcoming open beta is balancing community support while maintaining the flexibility of AI-driven self-paced learning.
We’re actually great a supporting mid-level designers, not just junior or early career designers. Career transitioners and mid-level designers have found a great deal of value from our program. They have enough principles to move FAST with their projects. Many that fall into this category have sharp visual design skills, but they need help in conducting research and coming up with strong KPIs for their case studies.
Our upcoming demo day is coming up this coming Wednesday, February 7th from 6:30-7:30pm et. If you're hiring UX designers or know someone who is, please reach out to me directly at kai@sprintfolio.com.
Newsletter Goodies
The newest addition to the Sprintfolio team, Nicholas Carey, wrote a fantastic article about the drawbacks of LLM chatbots. Discover how anticipatory design can expand possibilities for magical user experiences.
According to research by the Association for Talent Development, planning HOW to achieve a goal increases your likelihood of completing it by 50% and planning WHEN you will do this increases your chances by 40%.
I’ve been posting my daily stand ups on twitter for 2 and half weeks now. It’s helped me achieve more clarity and routine, while also boosting my impressions per day by 25%.
I created a figma template if you’d like to give it a try:
Thanks for your support
Is there anything you’d like me to write more about? I’m always willing to hear ideas, suggestions or partnerships!
kai@sprintfolio.com • tiktok • twitter • linkedin • buy me a coffee
