Problem Summary

Designers have no good options for creating a design portfolio.

1. Use a web builder, which is time-consuming, expensive, and are not self-marketing.

2. Use social design media, which use engagement-driven algorithms and are not private.

Designers frequently become consumed into an infinite redesign loop with their portfolios. When designers are given access to endless controls, we explore. Endlessly. And we never end up focused on what truly matters — our case studies.

Designers do not like maintaining their portfolios. This is because tools are built for hundreds of personas. And if we aren't applying for jobs, our portfolios are unlikely to get many views anyway.

Solution

1. Create a portfolio platform that is radically faster and easier to use than any alternative.

2. Make the platform self-marketable. Designers should be able to constantly field soft offers, whether they are currently employed or not.

3. Streamline the publish experience by limiting the customizability.

Landing Page

New products are all about distribution. While we are in alpha, we want to have a brilliant but still somewhat mysterious landing page that allows designers to join a waitlist.

The goal of the initial page isn't so much to sell designers on everything we will be offering, but to establish ourselves as a high-quality brand.

Profile

Profiles come with custom handles, similar to social media.We organize case studies by recency. During sign-up, we use an AI large language model to scrape their existing resume and collect work history. So the only thing that is needed when publishing a case study is the name and the company.

Case Study Builder

This was the most important part of the experience.It worked on a block system, and I reduced the block types to Title, Text, and Media to streamline decisions. All blocks are contained in rows and columns. Up to 3 columns can be used per row.