Иностранный язык в профессиональной деятельности (английский язык). Учебное пособие

PRO TIP: If you’re applying for a job, don’t be afraid to ask who’s reviewing your portfolio. Some companies might not tell you. But if they do, be smart and tailor it for that profile to make it a guaranteed success.

2. Show your best work

Designers make portfolios for multiple reasons. Some start because they want to show their good work to the community, or to build a reputation among their peers. But most of the time, designers build portfolios to get jobs. Before you start your own, you need to have a clear idea of what’s your goal. With that in mind, all the decisions you will have to make on the way will be easier.

Choosing what projects to put out there is one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make. So if you’re looking for a new job in product design, all your projects have to point in that direction. Pick your best ones, those that highlight your top qualities as a designer, and that are most relevant for your audience. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What does this project say about me?

• Does it help to understand how I would perform in the job? • Will this project get me hired?

Knowing what to leave out of it is just as important. I’ve found a lot of portfolios for product design with projects on branding, editorial design, and even pottery. It’s good to show your creative side but remember, keep your goal in mind. Craft your portfolio to do its job and discard the out-of-date or off-topic projects.

If after that you end up with just three projects, it’s OK. People reviewing your portfolio don’t need to see much to evaluate your work. Most of the time, just looking at one is enough to make the decision.

3. Choose the right format

I’ve reviewed portfolios in all the possible formats. There are people who choose to send a PDF file. Some prefer to put some files in folders and send a Google Drive or Dropbox link. But, most designers build their websites using the dozens of CMS tools available online (e.g. Dribbble, Behance, WordPress, Wix, Carbon, …). Some brave designers even code their own websites.

The truth is that there is no right or wrong when it comes to format, and you are not going to be rejected just because of that. But your choice says a lot about you as a designer. So when choosing a format, think about the people who are going to look at it, and make their lives a little easier.

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How easy is it to access?

When you put walls in the way, some people might not make the effort to jump them. So make it as open as possible for everyone. If it’s a file, don’t make it too heavy. If it’s a link, make it public and double-check it’s working fine. If it’s a website, try to make it a public domain. And when possible, try to avoid password-protecting projects (there’s always someone else that wants to have a look but can’t get in).

How easy is it to use?

Your portfolio should be self-explanatory and easy to navigate. Some more traditional formats might work, but in general, websites will deliver a better user experience. Make sure it’s easy to read, help users jump from project to project, and give them a clear way to get in touch with you.

4. Be a designer about it

Designers are creative creatures, and a portfolio can be seen as a blank canvas to express that creativity without the usual restrictions that come with work projects (read: clients, budget, time…). Some people use that opportunity to show they can think out of the box. They try new trendy navigation patterns or do complex animations that don’t even work in 60% of browsers.

It’s good to show creativity, but you also have to be consistent and use the same design principles you use when you work on a project. If the design quality of your projects is better than the design quality of your portfolio, it might raise a flag for someone reviewing your work.

So when designing your portfolio, do the things that make you a good designer. Make sure it’s easy to navigate, take care of information hierarchy, use beautiful UI, include good relevant images to support your projects, and more importantly, pay attention to details. There’s nothing that throws me off more than finding a typo or a blurry image in a portfolio.

5. Tell the whole story

As a designer, you’ve probably been mistaken for the person in the room that makes things look pretty. It’s a common misconception of design that is still very spread among a lot of organizations. That’s also why a lot of designers have a tendency to only focus on the visual part of design.

There are a lot of product design projects out there which are just a gallery of screens. You might think it’s a good way to make a first impression, but for most people looking at your portfolio, it’s not enough. Showing only the

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final result of the product is like inviting someone over to your place and just showing them the front door.

When you add a project to your portfolio, give anyone reading enough information to understand what you worked with.

• What’s the context? Tell me about the company, the product, and the team involved.

• Who’s it for? Tell me about the user, who they are, and what they need. • What problem is it solving? Tell me how you found their problem and why is it the right problem to solve.

• What data did you work with? Tell me what kind of qualitative and quantitative data you worked with for the project.

• How did you do it? Tell me what steps you took and what tools you used to find the right solution.

If you explain all that, visual design should come as the natural output of that process and will be self-explanatory to your readers.

6. Explain your impact

Just as important as telling the whole story is to have a happy ending. The perfect way to finish the story of your project is to show the results. How did that project make the product better? Did it improve conversion rates? Did it increase customer satisfaction?

Some designers tend to leave that part out of their portfolios, but it often makes the difference between good product designers and great ones. For someone looking to hire you, these clear numbers help measure the impact you could have on their organization.

Of course, not all projects are the same and sometimes you don’t have that data. Maybe the project never got to production, or maybe you didn’t have the right tools in place to measure. In that case, you can still tell your audience how you were planning to measure the success of your design. It’s a good way to let them know you understand how to make an impact.

(from: https://thoughts.travelperk.com/6-tips-for-building-a-killer-product- design-portfolio-c39f5529ec94)

Task 14. Share your product portfolios with your group-mates. Discuss them and make suggestions how they could be improved.

Task 15. What do art and design have in common? What roles does art play in product design? Read the text to find out.

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The Role of Art in Product Design

Many people unite visual art and design simply because of their many similarities. Art and design both require immense creativity, an acute sense of aesthetics and style, emotional intelligence, and the ability to tell a story through visual media. While these are compelling—and sometimes confusing— similarities, the application of these two disciplines is surprisingly straightforward:

• Design requires a function, art does not • Design is results-driven, art isn’t necessarily

The main differences stem from the objective of the work. When a designer starts working, he knows in advance what he’s tasked to achieve. He’s driven by an objective, a plan, a client, a contract. The artist’s driver is imagination.

The role of art in product design

How a product looks is becoming more important. This idea is proved by the rapid rise of companies that put product design first—consider Uber for transportation, Virgin’s take on banking, or Snapchat’s impact on communication. Where usability was once the only necessary characteristic, consumers now expect products that are both highly effective at meeting their needs and incredibly visually appealing, simply because of frequent interactions with design-focused brands (read: Apple’s various products).

Without these two things in tandem, the user’s perception of your product can be damaged. Often to the point of abandoning it all together.

So what does that mean for a product designer?

Designers must, in some ways, think like artists. They must logically apply an imaginative idea, translating and clarifying an intangible ideal. Certain art thinking must be considered when designing any new product or feature set.

Art provokes, design clarifies.

Applying art thinking to your design thinking

Art is purposefully provocative. It’s intentionally emotional. Every stroke of a pen, smudge of charcoal, or splash of paint was meant to illicit a specific reaction from the viewer—pushing and pulling on the viewer’s emotions. Ultimately, designers need to understand how visuals affect emotions, how emotions affect choice, and how to use that to your product’s advantage. All design choices should be informed by how someone uses, plans to use, and feels about the product.

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Artist’s thinking can be applied to your design—users ultimately stick with products because they trust them, and that trust is developed because the product meets their specific needs and provides the right emotional experience.

Even though emotions often appear illogical, there’s method to their madness. Things that are off-balance will logically make a person feel offbalance as well. White space makes people feel calm … but too much and your user could feel isolated. By learning to understand and translate people’s emotional reactions, you can project user responses and better control their emotional experience through your product.

Emotional intelligence

Unfortunately, lots of people are bad at understanding why they feel certain things at certain times, and even worse at communicating them. It’s your job to translate, and then act upon, those feelings for them. The accurate identification, translation, and guidance of these emotions is ‘emotional intelligence.’

You can up your emotional intelligence with these methods—all of which are super-handy in user research.

Get more from visualizations

A person will be able to identify a general emotional state by looking at something, but this state is defined by more than just what the subject says. Take note of how long a person takes to come up with their feeling. If it’s immediate, then your visual is accurately displaying a consistent experience. If it takes more than a few seconds for the subject to respond, the visual’s intent is obviously unclear or complex.

You can also take note of the person’s body language—do they lean in (read: curious) or turn to the side (read: defensive)?

Ask the right questions

People are better at answering questions accurately than coming up with the words themselves. But don’t just ask, ‘How does this make you feel?’ Instead, be specific. Try, ‘Does this make you feel calm, or numb?’ Specifics will often show you subtleties you may have missed by asking a more generic question.

Specifics will also often lead to a conversation regarding those subtleties, leading to better understanding of your user in general.

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Walk in the user’s shoes

Culture and upbringing play massive roles in how a person engages with the world around them, including the products they use. Being sensitive to these differences will help you best identify and understand your potential user’s emotional state within your product. Ask your subject contextual questions to help discover how they’ll react, in context, to different emotional possibilities in your product. Read about how culture has affected people’s habits. Then, internalize those habits and use your newfound context to project possible behaviors inside the product.

How thinking like an artist can help your product designs

The role of art in product design is to best understand, and then guide, your user’s emotional state through your product. As you get better at reading user moods and reactions without needing to ask for clarification, your design process will become easier and your products will become more interesting to users.

(from: https://www.invisionapp.com/inside-design/the-role-of-art-in- product-design)

Task 16. Read the quotes of famous people on product design. Which ones do you like best? Which ones do you agree with?

1.“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” – Steve Jobs

2.‘Our role is to imagine products that don’t exist and guide them to life.’ – Apple designer Christopher Stringer

3.‘It’s all about one thing: creative problem-solving to get the story out.’ – Bob Greenberg, founder, chairman and CEO of R/GA

4.‘The only important thing about design is how it relates to people.’ – designer, educator and author Victor Papanek

5.‘Good design is good business.’ – retired IBM CEO Thomas Watson, Junior

6.‘Only when the design fails does it draw attention to itself; when it succeeds, it’s invisible.’ – typographer and book designer John D. Berry

7.‘(Design is) a plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.’ – furniture designer Charles Eames

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8.‘Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent.’ – designer Joe Sparano

9.‘Like all forms of design, visual design is about problem solving, not about personal preference or unsupported opinion.’ – author and product designer Bob Baxley in ‘Making the Web Work’

10.‘When we look for new technologies and ways to guide the future, then we, like Leonardo (da Vinci), should think about humans and their needs. Leonardo was concerned about commerce, security, education, medicine and urban design. He was very eclectic in his thoughts and he was also very practical. He wanted to see real things get built. He also was concerned about aesthetics. (…) Instead of trying to apply the latest new technology, we start by asking what is it that people want to do in their lives?’ – professor, computer scientist and author Ben Shneiderman.

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GLOSSARY

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