UX designer Aniruddh Paraskar compares three portfolio options: custom websites built with no-code tools like Framer, Notion's free portfolio template with Figma embedding, and community platforms like Behance and Dribbble. The best choice depends on whether you prioritize personalization and a unique domain or ease of maintenance and recruiter visibility.
As a UX designer, when it comes to design portfolio, most of us are confused whether we should create our own website or a Notion portfolio, or we should create a profile on Dribbble and Behance. Well, if you have the very same question, let me help you with that. Without any further ado, let's get started. Hey everybody, hi, my name is Aniruddh Paraskar and welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is a place where I talk about design, tech, and everything. And in this video, I'm going to explain you the most efficient way to actually host your design portfolio. So first thing first, no matter how good or experienced UX or UI designer you are, unless and until you have an actual shareable portfolio with the recruiter, it is not going to help you crack any UX design job. So that is why the moment you're looking for a change or a new UX design job, you have to make sure that you have a shareable portfolio with you that you can share with the recruiter and they can look forward to it and take you to the next steps. And without a portfolio, it is going to be very difficult to actually crack a job. So let's try to understand the first method. Should we create our own website for my UX design portfolio? Well, let's just try to understand that creating a website in 2023 is very simple. You have hundreds of no-code websites that is available out there for actually nothing but free. You can use any of the no-code website and actually create your online website or portfolio in single day. Let's say for example Framer. Framer actually started as an advanced prototyping tool, but today with integration of AI, it can actually create websites for you with one single prompt. All you need to do is just go to Framer website and type something and it will actually create the entire website for you. This is how you can actually get started with creating a website. The only thing you need to understand about hosting a website is it's gonna take good amount of efforts for you to actually maintain your website and keep on updating, because now and then you'll have to log into the Framer and keep on updating your portfolio. And at the same time, if you want your unique domain with your name, you'll have to spend some money out there also. So should we make our own website for my design portfolio? The simple answer is going to be yes if you can actually customize and personalize your website with something that reflects your own personality into that website. Having a generic template and posting your website is just going to be a waste of time and efforts because you can simply do that with so many other tools that are present online. So I would recommend that if you actually have to show some of your personalization and customization on a website that actually reflects your personality, please go ahead with creating a website for your portfolio But if you do not have something like that, so make sure that you stick to other method that I'm going to share right now. Option number 2 is Notion portfolio. Well, to be very honest, I make sure that I tell every designer irrespective of their seniority level to actually create their portfolio on Notion because Notion is just like any other documentation tool. There is minimal amount of learning curve that you need to understand and you can start using Notion for one user free of cost. That is not all. Notion already has a design portfolio template With one single click, you can actually replicate the entire portfolio in your own workspace. Now, this entire portfolio is designed keeping in mind that it's going to be used by a UX designer for showcasing their portfolio. Like, for example, you can see it has your image, it has a cover photo, it has your name, it also has a list of projects and all the shareable links that you can put over here. That is not all. If you click on any of this case study, you'll get to see how the case study is actually presented and give you a direction of the steps that you can start using for your own case study. As you can see, this is a documentation tool. You can quickly go forward and start replacing all of this data with your own data. You can also go forward and copy paste all your images and start replacing out over there. Not just that, you can also integrate your entire Figma prototype over here by embedding the entire Figma link. Let's say you're done creating a Notion design portfolio. All you need to do is just go here and click on share and copy paste this URL, and you can share with anybody that you would like to do. Now they will get to see the exact variation or version that you have actually created over here. And let's just say if I'm browsing your portfolio via this Notion link, portfolio in real time. So if you make any changes in your portfolio, that would be reflected to everyone who is using that URL. Using Notion, it is so easy and simple to create and manage your entire case studies or portfolio. Let's just go forward to the third option, creating your profile on Behance, on Dribbble. Well, let's just try to understand that Dribbble and Behance has a huge amount of community and people from design domain and all the people who are actually looking forward to hire UX designer already. So this is only going to be an additional advantage for creating a portfolio on such platform. So make sure that you create your Behance and Dribbble account and start posting some of your amazing work out there because Behance and Dribbble is going to be an amazing place to showcase your skill. It is not going to be an amazing place to showcase your case study or portfolio. So make sure you start uploading all your design work on Behance and Dribbble and keep it ready for people to find you there as a creative designer. If you're still confused about which of the method that you need to use or what is the best method for you, all you need to understand that the portfolio that you create has to be easy to maintain has to be easy to accessible to the recruiter. If you think any of these 3 methods is going to help you with these 2 important problem statements, go forward and use anything that you love. So that was all about the 3 important ways you can actually host your design case study or portfolios to share with your recruiter. I hope you got to learn something new about UX design. If you like this video, make sure that you share with your other UX designer friends. This is me, Ankit Paraskar. Until next time, signing it off.
