I've been using Notion to write since 2019. Curate your content privately or share it. I see Notion as a website template similar to what you might find on Squarespace or Wix. Check out the pros, cons, and a Notion alternative you might like. Keep in mind that whatever image you decide to use as the cover, will show up in different views as thumbnails. Notion would probably work too it's less aesthetically focused but has richer options for layout and content types, so just depends on what you're looking for. I like the simplicity of it as a medium and allows to focus on the content rather than the bells and whistles so to speak. For this article, I made the layout as close as possible to my personal website. It's free, but you can also choose the paid version for extra features and competencies. Now is a good time to put your site on Super a no-code website builder for Notion. However, I believe a UX portfolio should showcase its content as much as its visual design, if not more. Its a tool with abundant options but limited customization. This section showcases all of your selected works. If you have a portfolio in a good spot already in Notion, there isn't too much harm in using it now and just seeing how it goes. By contrast, Triskell rates 4.5/5 stars with 6 reviews. We can make use of the pace of working with Notion and create a very accessible, clean, and even good-looking portfolio without spending too much time . Go to icon near the top right New button of the Gallery. I created a rudimentary portfolio within a single page that I didn't take live. The feedback is just a joy to see. Learn how your content performs on social media. But that's not all. All Notion-based websites look pretty much the same. To change the hero image, hover over the top of the page to bring up the context menu that allows you to choose an image. It's a free platform. For instance, if you are following the sort of static case study template everyone uses today, I don't think Notion would be good. You get the basic crux. We'll only send the occasional email and promise not to spam. Users can connect these components to create their own systems for knowledge management, note-taking, data management, project management, among others. The superior portfolio template crafted for modern work.How do you make a strong first impression with your portfolio or resume?Visually.The average time a recruiter spends on their initial screening of a resume is 6-8 seconds. I go with a gallery view as all my projects are image heavy, and I dont like to write due to Notions limited font library (pretty basic and ugly). Here's a detailed review of Clippings, a look at its pros & cons, and a look at Authory as an alternative. Notion can be a way to present your product, only if your story and deliverables are great IMO. I think its better to have an updated notion than an outdated and buggy website portfolio. UX Planet is a one-stop resource for everything related to user experience. Notion is a great tool for planning, collaboration, and organization. As is customary, I've started out with an image, that I designed myself in Sketch, and an introductory blurb about me. Website doesnt have to be website. Screenshots of your designs have enough power to overcome Notions visual design. Post flair is required. This all took a lot of creativity, but I was able to distinguish different types of content and utilize a visual hierarchy. an interviewer to set a job interview ? Hi there Im Sharanya a freelance UI/UX designer writing about design here. The best part it's free to use. Lets start building your portfolio tracker. I know Ive left pages unedited in the past because I didnt press save before accidentally exiting the page. Design the best cover possible. Now you can open and customize the notion for your own tracking. I don't think this is an appropriate solution. My goal was to create a tracker to enable real-time updates of my work, portfolio, and resources in one place. Dividers are a nice way to denote separate sections of your page. If you want a custom domain for your portfolio, you can set it up yourself on your own systems following this tutorial. This productivity tool essentially lets you create documents and collaborate with your team. Im creating my UX portfolio on Notion based on the free cost and endless amount of functionality and ease. Catch the visitors attention with the titles, and sell them your work/service with your well-put sentences. Its possible to link visitors to blocks of text or images (aka anchor links). All you have to do is paste the link to your media or program page and voila! I also think Craft can make some really nice looking document-based webpages, and have used it before to land a job so I can vouch for it as a portfolio tool. See what features youre missing out on! Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design thats more usable. Go to your Home Page. I used the comment feature to share my pitch in smaller text. The downside: There is a lot of technical setup (and potential monetary cost) involved in building, hosting and deploying your site and without prior experience, the learning curve may be high and delay you in actually completing your website. Oh, and if you enjoyed playing with legos as a kid, you might find this interesting Title and Project Details: Using a combination of an ' H1' block, that I then highlighted and turned blue using the default text color options, and a plain old ' Text' block. After my career change, personal struggles, and COVID-19, I found myself challenged financially. This content and project management tool is a favorite among writers and managers, but it has yet to gain much traction as a portfolio builder. More importantly, its rare to find a template that is unique, suits their personality, and is viewer-friendly. Figure out what your end goal is, and prepare all the links and a CTA according to it. Blog post, Book, Highlight, Social), duplicate the previous content or repeat Step 5, 6 and 7. Quick solution - It's great for beginners or anyone that doesnt want to get invest the time, money or effort into the technical stuff and just wants to focus on the content and getting their work out there. T he latest craze among the product & design community is building and launching quick and crisp portfolios constructed on top of Notion. Much easier for me to keep my CV up to date when its right there in Notion and it avoids it being caught up by scammy recruiters who are just PDF harvesting. Designed as a productivity-boosting application, Notion also provides databases, kanban boards, calendars, reminders, wikis, and so much more. Youre asked if you want to embed this link! 10 sec More than just a design portfolio website builder Photos are automatically clickable to see full size. It is unfortunate to read comments from a UX Director saying they bin someones portfolio because of the platform they use. The home page of the website has three sections The introductory section, the Works section, and the contact section. Simple Portfolio Template build on Notion.Once you take the plunge and make your purchase, it's time to bring your new Notion templates to life. Inserting my title and description in the same as above, I've followed this up with a full-width image as a page separator. Last year, I created a Notion portfolio tracker to track all my work, so that I can easily share resources with others. This is the place where you list out your project and work. Prototyping, UX Design, Front-end Development and Beyond | Write for us https://bit.ly/apply-prototypr, Product Designer who narrates stories. By creating new pages and linking them back to a single page (or multiple pages), you can create wireframes and complex structures for your portfolio website. This is especially true for a UX portfolio, and its content should not be forgotten under a flashy design. There's no in-built option to keep certain pages in your portfolio private. It still took me a couple of days to set up, mainly because I had to find and paste my articles. Some of these limitations can be overcomed by using 3rd party applications. If youre interested in designing a full case study like the ones shown here and getting 1:1 mentorship custom crafting your UI/UX portfolio, have a look at our Product Design Master Course. It feels a little funny at first, but as soon as it's big enough it will just magically snap into the full-width layout (you may have to scroll back up a bit to see it). Download our entire 1-click Notion Portfolio Template pack here! Bootcamp is a collection of resources and opinion pieces about UX, UI, and Product. I'll also point out some pros and cons of the tool, and if you're so inclined, discuss an alternative tool that lets you build an industry-best portfolio within a few minutes, with minimal effort on your part. Whats a digital portfolio without a URL? This, to me, was the best reason to build my portfolio on Notion. Feel free to explore and experiment. I've created a custom cover image for my first case study and then laid out my portfolio with the following sections: Using a combination of an 'H1' block, which I then highlighted and turned blue using the default text color options, and a plain old 'Text' block. Theres no need for loading wheels or a progress bar because as soon as you add that forgotten comma, your updates show up in the webpage. Another vote for super here. Go to Notion and sign up for a free account. But I added a layer on top of it via Super.So to make it into a website. Lets start building. Rename your "workspace" to your portfolio name. You can embed third-party content like images, videos, Figma prototypes, code blocks, etc., with a click the "text block" concept in Notion is especially useful in this regard. Archive Get automated backups of all content you create. If you have the URL of the site where they exist, and the site is active, Authory will collate all your content for you. Then, configure these settings accordingly: Tips: To build out the rest of your portfolio sections (i.e. I can drag and drop blocks of text or media within milliseconds. Notion-based portfolios can be great substitutes for UX Researchers, Content Designers/Writers, Product Managers, or Data/Product Analysts. Would I look silly building on a free platform with a .notion.site in the URL? Place all information in a single workspace or create new Notion pages devoted to specific sections work samples, case studies, customer testimonials, etc. Maybe you're focusing on mobile design and want to show more prototypes -- or maybe you have a ton of video case studies and want to create a portal to show them all. Using Notion Pros This is where you have detailed case studies of your selected works. This is unfortunate because a site with a trailing .notion.site is not as sophisticated as adrianye.com or adrianye.design. Even more unfortunate is that I actually do own a domain name but the process to link it to Notion is complicated and can be costly. 7. PDF export - If you still want that nice static PDF you can export that too with just one click. Get a custom domain and personalize your portfolio even further. The final option is something you may not have thought of before. Maybe a compromise to come off as more professional is having your own domain and redirecting it to your Notion space? I'm also not a UX designer by trade. Your Notion site will have a lot of text content, heres a list of everything youll need . I dont write too much as I mentioned previously as well. Interactive - You can actually embed interactive prototypes, videos and links without fussing with code. Disable "Allow Duplicate as template" if you don't want anyone using your structure. In the case of the latter, the viewer can click to unfold the information under respective headers. Option 3: You can also settle for a simple PDF or Word doc: The upside: All you need is knowledge of a word-processing program, its fairly easy to format and theres no technical overhead. My suggestion put all your social links where you want to grow an audience and a Calendly link for people interested in booking a call with you. I'm confused. Browse our collection of free UX/UI design crash courses and video lesson library, Watch free replays or our live UX/UI and Product Designer webinars and workshops, Download our Notion templates for UX/UI and Product Designers, Listen to the latest episodes of our DesignerUp Podcast about mindful design. You need no coding skills or even knowledge of tools like Webflow to set up a portfolio website from scratch. Option 1: Traditionally, you can self-host your portfolio on a CMS like WordPress, Squarespace or Ghost: The upside: You will have your very own, professional website with custom URL to link to when submitting your design portfolio and perhaps for use on printed materials like business cards. On Deck ODF10. I think Notion may be more appropriate for a very innovative portfolio. My workaround is using a shortened URL (https://adrianye.com/ux) to link to my portfolio so that it is more memorable for hiring managers. Once you make edits to your Figma artboard or Miro brainstorming space, this content will show on your Notions embedded block. Its great for things like note-taking, daily journaling, documentation, and even habit tracking! Use the content you create to turbocharge your personal brand. This is the most important part of any design portfolio that I see stays missing in most Notion portfolios. I am open to work! ChatGPT is a free-to-use AI chatbot product developed by OpenAI. I'd definitely look twice if an applicant for a job I was hiring for sent in a Neocities link! At first, I thought it was ridiculous to build my UX portfolio on Notion. Its UI is predictable and reliable. Notion is effectively a CMS (content management system) with ability to instantly turn any pages into sharable web pages. You can click on the icon on the left to bring up the emoticon menu in order to change it or upload your own. The viewer will be able to click through your entire prototype directly from your Notion page! Writes about music on weekends. For a tool to be accessible, it must account for diverse audiences. Prepare all assets. With Authory, shes found a solution for both at the same time. In each section, type a / to add these block components for different content formats: On the right side of the horizontal section in Step 3, I created a table of content as quick navigation for these portfolio sections: Lets build out each of the portfolio sections. Jumping over to another case study, one of my favorite features in Notion is the ability to embed your live, interactive UI prototypes from Invision. If you want to export this to another format you can find that option in the context menu at the top right of your Notion workspace. Getting started Start a new workspace in Notion Create a database by choosing "Table" option Start editing your Table, just like Excel or Google Sheets 3. On your Authory portfolio, your content is arranged under relevant "headers," i.e., Collection names. This is where people who interested in connecting with you get your contact details. These didnt deter me, but some might be a turn-off for you! Both keyboard- and mouse-friendly users can switch between text formats easily. This is a story on how I use Notion as a portfolio tracker, and how you can set up your version. If you're creating a portfolio, you still have to manually track down, save and add all your work. Notion has some color customizations but theyre purely for text. Its online - You can publish pages to the web the same way you would publish any website and pages can be indexed by search engines. 5. Notion portfolio template for freelancers. Present your work as a list, a grid, or a gallery with previews. r/UXDesign is aimed at practicing UX professionals. And then you can start editing your Board, just like Trello. A Notion Resume or Portfolio template that's going to give you an edge. You can use Notion to display content in various formats, systems, and hierarchies. So more pros than cons, right? Go to Notion and sign up for a free account, then: Add a new Page in Notion Name your doc title "Portfolio Tracker" Select the "Empty With Icon", the 1st option For a wider layout, turn on. This automatically makes your portfolio site more navigable and user-friendly. As a recent bootcamp grad, Im wondering what your opinions are on using Notion to host my case studies, etc. But how can folks do this on designated website-building platforms with limited funds or the ability to customize without code? How do you not do that with Notion? The best part its free to use. No matter your . Join my content verse or slide into my DMs on LinkedIn, Twitter, Figma, Dribbble, and Substack. Comment your thoughts and feedback, or start a conversation! Alternatively, you can also book a design mentorship session by sending a request on RookieUp. Before I end, heres what my portfolio ladder has looked like since 2011. It would help you stand out above a very dry looking notion feed. Widgets to display your personal portfolio on other sites, such as your personal website (if you have one). Instead of breaking the bank on expensive site providers where I would procrastinate to update new projects every 3 months, it was relatively easier to have a Notion page provide similar (a bit toned down) features for free. Put together a list of people who could help support you on the day of the launch. There's 6-time Emmy award winner David Pogue, Steven Levy, Editor at Large, WIRED, and Brian Fung, a Technology Reporter at CNN, to name a very few. You can create folders and sub-folders and store documentation in hierarchical systems. Log into Super and use my site template after putting your own content and you got yourself a brand new portfolio site, for free! The about page has information about you. [#3] Visually pleasing design can mask usability problems and prevent issues from being discovered during usability testing. The main reason for that is the UX Law Aesthetic-Usability Effect. Option 1: Traditionally, you can self-host your portfolio on a CMS like WordPress, Squarespace or Ghost: The upside: You will have your very own, professional website with custom URL to link to when submitting your design portfolio and perhaps for use on printed materials like business cards. To do this, add an 'Image' block and then hover over the bottom right corner of the image until you see the opposing arrow icon, then drag your image out to the right as if you're trying to enlarge it to be as big as possible. For example: article tool, event app, meal box app, finance tracker, SaaS tracker, and habit tracker. Get automated backups of all content you create. The whole process is divided into the following 4 parts for easier understanding: What each section talks about is pretty much explanatory from the section name itself. Why not? Next, you can add in your introductory content. The sites where you're published are called "sources" in Authorys ecosystem. Just add in your content as you normally would in a vertical fashion (I've turned mine into an H1 Heading by highlighting it to bring up the text options). No need to manually upload/copy-paste your content either. to show/hide in your workspace. Building a portfolio either on Notion or on a website platform like Squarespace or Webflow is equally challenging initially. Its UX is intuitive, interactive, and has no delays. Connect on https://www.linkedin.com/in/djgarg/. Reach out to me at [email protected]. To submit your story: https://tinyurl.com/bootcampsub To find UX jobs: https://tinyurl.com/uxjobboard. Most notably, Notion includes tools great for accessibility and the CMS is available for anyone despite their income. Users with ZERO experience in coding or configuring tools like Webflow and framer can set up a Notion page pretty quickly . This section has a brief introduction about you who you are, what you want to do, and what you do. A rising tide lifts all boats as they say, and a good team will teach you their preferred methods. Allows creation of newsletters with a couple of clicks. If you want the cover image of your page to be displayed on your card, you can select it from the Card Preview drop down. Pages generally look something like this. But this is exactly addressing a problem of many people in design who need or want a portfolio, but don't necessarily see the justification for spending hours and hours on creating set portfolio. Super is expensive but Fruition is free. here it is. Start making more money You now have a customizable portfolio on Notion. Before beginning, we need to set up the workspace. Notion rates 4.7/5 stars with 2,058 reviews. I think you should always own your digital presence but I understand the pull of Notion. Music by Joakim Karud Who this course is for: Architects Artists