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Telling a story in your portfolio is essentially taking the person who's going through it on a journey that feels coherent and cohesive. And I think why storytelling is so important is because most of portfolios feel very boring in a way, because most of the portfolios are constructed on a version of the same structure, right? This is the intro, this is the
problem. This is the solution. We did wireframes, prototype. So it's that infamous checklist we keep talking about. And that makes portfolios feel all the same. So if you employ storytelling and you give a spin to that journey and you make it not so much about deliverables or the things that are obviously part of the design process, but you focus more on the interesting things that happened on that project, then you have a much better chance
to show maturity and be interesting.
Hello designers and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. As always, I'm joined by Anfisa and today we will be unpacking a topic that's very talked about but that has the clarity as to what it actually means and the topic is storytelling in portfolios. With the syndrome in mind, I just want to jump and ask Anfisa how her past weeks were. We actually were back from a short, unannounced, impromptu kind of break and
And so I'm wondering if she has any updates she wants to share with us and how she's been doing. Hello, hello, everyone. So excited to have you back and finally talk to you, Joanna, because I don't think we have talked for about one month. And I think it's a pattern that we have that on summer we have those unannounced breaks. I think like we just don't realize we need a break until we're like, let's record another episode. And then we're like,
I guess we don't have energy. We need some time off. So we suddenly happened to not announce it. We're sorry for that. Unfortunately, the life happens. But what happened? Actually, I was just sharing with you, Joanna, before we started the recording, that my life is surprisingly most... We have this like...
superstitious law that you have to spit and knock the wood three times to not jinx yourself. But nothing bad is happening and that's great about the life right now. I need like a smooth sailing summer. Every day should have this strict routine. Nobody gets sick. Nobody gets like something sudden and...
out of planning and that's considered to be a really good routine right now. So I'm pretty happy. I'm pretty okay with everything that's going on. The baby is one year and almost two months now. We are having so much fun. The baby is extremely active. I have a boy. Boys are very active usually. So we're having fun. It's exciting. I also have my mom who came right now and helping me out. So this way I'm able to actually work a little bit. So exciting things, exciting time, nothing crazy. I
And I'm actually getting really, really hyped about September because in September, we have actually something that we didn't talk about just yet, but we are going to meet each other at the Hatch Conference in Berlin. Yay! I'm really, really, really excited about this because first of all, we've never met with Ioana, but second of all, we are going to shoot a live episode of this exact podcast on SUX Talks on the conference set. So Damian, who's the organizer at
the Hatch event in Berlin, reached us out, invited us to have a live recording. And I just couldn't say no to this, honestly, because first of all, again, I will meet Ioana finally. Can you believe that we've never met? We had so many opportunities, but then obviously we started recording it during the COVID and we had babies. So that was never an option.
Think about this conference. It's one of those conferences that I keep hearing from people who were there last year, that it's actually reflecting the same atmosphere, the same environment that you usually see in those big conferences in the US, in the config, in the LA. For folks in Europe, it just feels like everything is happening in the US and we have to
fly there. So it's a big journey for us to go into US and be a part of the community there, right? And then suddenly somebody throws a conference that feels exactly like in the US where all the European design community gets together and actually gets an opportunity to meet each other, have fun, have excitement, discuss things, have a coffee with each other. Oh my God, I'm just really getting super excited about this opportunity.
If somebody is listening to this podcast and wants to meet us or also wants to just meet European communities, all the top companies, I think they're having this rule of seniority. Basically, you would have to have some years of experience to be able to attend in the real life on site. But you can also get the online tickets. Everyone can get them. You will find all the links in the show notes of the episode. So yeah, definitely check it out. I really recommend this. I'm looking forward to September. Anything else you want to add about Hatch, Ioana?
Or maybe also let us know how was your last week? Yeah, well, about Hatch, I'm very excited. I'm mostly excited about meeting you, but I'm also very excited about conferences in general and Hatch is very, very cool. So I also keep hearing that last year I got this really bad FOMO that I wasn't there. And it's also in Berlin, which is...
as everyone knows by now, one of my favorite, if not my favorite city in Europe. So it's going to be FOMO, but there, right? Like I want to go everywhere. I want to talk to everyone. I want to meet all the people and I want to do all the things. So I'm very excited and I'm looking forward. I think the venue is amazing. I just looked it up when I was trying to book travels earlier this week. So I don't know. Everything is very, very, very exciting.
Hank is coming from New York. I've been in the US and met him there and now he's coming to Europe and I'll meet him here as well. There is just a unique moment to meet other designers and I was reflecting in the past couple of weeks. I'm feeling very lonely because life updates. I'm super lonely.
But no, I'm feeling lonely because I'm working remotely and I don't work from a co-working space. I work from home. And so I'm basically just alone at home in front of a screen for 10 hours a day. After one year, it gets to you, especially if you're a very social person and I'm an extrovert. I like to talk. I like to see people. This is a very important part of my mental health. And now I don't have it.
And so I was wondering, is there a workaround that I could take? One is obviously going to a co-working space, but another one is maybe hosting meetups here in Bucharest. Because I realized that this in-person meeting between designers and just having random conversations, maybe about design, maybe about Figma's AI failure, maybe I don't know about what thing that happened in the industry, or just
Not design. Maybe we're talking about art. So that kind of non-deterministic conversational behavior that groups tend to take, right? That's something I miss. So now I'm having meetings about very specific topics we know we're going to talk about. And then now we're doing the podcast and we have a topic. But I miss that kind of randomness of conversations that happen outside of structures and plans. So I was wondering, should I start organizing meetups in Bucharest? And I don't have the time for it, so I'm not going to do it.
But yeah, I'm very grateful that Hatch Conference seems to be like the top of the deal. So there's no better place to meet designers and it's designers from all over the world, which is very, very interesting. And so, yeah, I'm also very excited. I really am.
In terms of life updates, I think if our listeners are into us, you've probably seen that at Miro, we just launched this big AI announcement. It was a long time in the making, a lot of work that went into it, a lot of stress, as you can imagine. And so it was a moment of celebration, right? So months of work finally shipped.
and out there and seeing the enthusiasm and the positive reception and how people are actually excited about some of the things we've been designing and building. It's like the rewards that I didn't know I needed for my work. And so I'm very happy about that. I just hosted an Instagram live. It's on my profile if anybody wants to check it out. It's about my work as an AI product designer at Miro. So how does the life of an AI product designer actually look like? And what are the challenges, the problems, the limitations, the strange aspects
things we have to deal with when you're operating in this very ambiguous, still ambiguous space. And I talk about that and how we made these decisions at Miro. And I think it's really interesting for anyone who's trying to prepare for how our roles will change when we start designing for new patterns, new models, new surfaces, and so on. So check out my life on my profile. I talk about my Miro experience as the AI designer and much more.
And yeah, this is what I've been doing in a nutshell. I'm also trying to take a break. I'm really keen on taking a two weeks holiday. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do that eventually. But yeah, I'm also in that summer mood, right? Taking longer weekends, trying to enjoy the seaside and stuff like that. Very basic human joys.
Let's jump into our topic for today. The topic is storytelling in portfolios. Is it real? Does it even exist? Or it's just this myth that everybody talks about, but nobody knows what it means. There's this very universal, very spread advice that
You should focus on the narrative. You should focus on the story. Storytelling is important. But what does it really mean to have a story in your portfolio, in your case studies? And Anvi Sa has a course about preparing for landing a job and how to land a job, especially in this tough market. I think it's the place to go if you want to go prepared and really land a job. But something that is recognized as a very important pillar to your job hunt success is this aspect of storytelling.
I just want us to unpack this topic. So I'm going to start by asking Anfisa, why is storytelling important? Yeah, why is everybody so focused on this? What's all the hype?
And I like that you start this conversation from the question of why. I think it's always fundamental for everything we're doing in life, right? Like as designers, we sometimes have this tendency of jumping into the results, into the ideas, into the solutions. And like we hear everywhere, like storytelling is a solution, storytelling is a solution, but why?
That's why I like that you asked this question. And my answer to this is actually something I think we all as designers forget to do when we actually start looking for a job, but we usually do this in our real life, is building the empathy for the hiring manager. If you want TLDR in the current market,
hiring managers, if we build the empathy for them, they just don't have energy and time anymore to look through their portfolios. So the current market environment and the current market reality is that I just tried to do the TLDR, but it's actually very hard for me given all the context I was looking for and researching. But long story short,
trying to at least, is that after the COVID where companies overhired the designers and then during the economic crisis, companies freed their budgets, laying off people, trying to be very pragmatic with basically hiring as well as just funding and trying to make the break-even points, get profitable because investor wants that and blah blah blah. Market is crazy right now. But that resulted in the tech job market, including design market,
being very frozen and very, very passive. Because during the COVID, we were all experiencing a very, very like positive times. Everybody was hiring, over hiring, and now it resulted in people being laid off. And then companies still are very, very, let's say, reserved with hiring. On the good side, actually, a lot of companies started looking for jobs. So I see a lot of good signals right now in the market, but it's still nowhere near 2020s and 2021st.
So why the storytelling is important is because in the given market, which is just trying to establish the context, when the hiring managers are very understaffed,
Sometimes their teams were laid off. Sometimes the hiring manager, design manager usually doesn't have too many people. They have to handle strategy, meetings, hiring, budgets, promoting their people to keep them motivated, building the strategy for the product, etc., etc. There's just so many things on the hiring manager plate usually, and they only have less time in their calendar consequently.
So what happens is, again, starting from the empathy, which I like to start every design project, including your job hunting process. So hiring managers, if you think about their day life, their calendar are extremely, extremely busy. They're packed with events. And when in the market that is very challenging, people are looking for a job, there is just so many people looking for a job and so little demand. What happens in the real world is that when you post a
Job post, if two years ago, maybe like 200 people were applying for a good job, these days for any job, you would have sometimes 500 applications, 1,000 applications. With the hiring manager who have absolutely no time in their calendar, how would you imagine these hiring managers to actually review your portfolio in under 20 minutes, 1,000 portfolios? That's just an impossible mission, right?
So that's the context in which we're in today, as of middle of 2024. My high hopes is that 2025 is the year things will finally get better. But as of right now, hiring managers are still very stretched thin. They have absolutely no free time, but they get influx of the portfolios. And very often those portfolios are relevant. And it's understandable because we as designers, if there are no jobs, we apply everywhere, anywhere, anywhere we can get our feet at the door, right? So yeah, the market is very imbalanced. Hiring managers have to go through thousands of portfolios.
And that's the context. And if you think about the specific jobs to be done for the hiring manager, that's something, by the way, we're doing sometimes in the job hunting community I'm running. We started those exercises from the empathy place. Recently, we have this book club workshop where we were trying to emphasize for the hiring manager, imagine there are jobs to be done during the day.
And one of those jobs to be done we were trying to tackle was, okay, I have 33 minutes. How do I go through 500 portfolios right now? And we actually even role-played this exercise and quickly went through the portfolios in like under two minutes every single one. It's a challenging place to be in for the hiring manager. And when you are, let's flip the tables and imagine you're a designer and you applied with your portfolio.
And you're one of those 1,000 portfolios. Your portfolio now doesn't have two or three minutes to look through. Nobody will be reading your portfolios because HireMager doesn't have the time for that. You're one of those 1,000 portfolios. You need to stand out strongly. You cannot be yet another portfolio that looks exactly the same like another 1,000 portfolios. You really need to stand out in order to make a cut.
And right now, more and more people realize the value of the storytelling. So if two years ago, people who actually thought about storytelling and their portfolios, they stood out immediately. Today, the proportion might be that it's already 20, 30% of the people actually put effort into building a good story in their portfolios. So even by doing the story is not enough. Today, you would have to do a really good story. You have to be advanced and understanding the narrative and what it means to create for attention in the quick scanning experience.
So that's the reason why the storytelling is very important. But yet it still definitely make you outstanding if you will focus on a good storytelling. And there are multiple principles you would have to go through. So I think we can talk about this in the next couple of questions. But I want to ask you, Joanna, if you also have any opinions around why storytelling is a buzzword and everybody's talking about it as well. I do have opinion. Actually, the second question I wanted to bring to the table, what does it mean to tell a story in your portfolio?
Telling a story in your portfolio is essentially taking the person who's going through it on a journey that feels coherent and cohesive and is easy to grasp by anyone. And I think why storytelling is so important to answer the first question is because most of portfolios feel very
stale, very boring in a way, because most of the portfolios are constructed on a version of the same structure, right? This is the intro, this is the problem, this is the solution. Sometimes there's not even a metric or outcome or what happened to that. It's just like, we, we
We did wireframes, we did a prototype, we tested with users. So it's that infamous checklist we keep talking about. And that makes portfolios feel all the same. And it's a boring experience. After 10 portfolios, you're going to get bored by seeing the same structure, the same kind of narrative, if you want.
the same experience again and again. So if you employ storytelling and you give a spin to that journey and you kind of make it not so much about deliverables or checking things out of a checklist or the things that are obviously part of the design process, but you focus more on the interesting things that happened on that project and that are particular to that project, then you have a much better chance
to show maturity and be interesting. And so that's why it's important. It's the thing that differentiates the checklist experience from an actual story and something that's interesting and tells people where you did well, where you did not so well. And so it's just going from these objective things, like just ticking things off to something that's subjective, personal and relevant to that particular project.
So I think that's why portfolios are important. And that's why you need to tell a story. And now let's jump into what it actually means to tell a story because it feels very abstract. How do I tell the story? Within the story, the things that I did, like if I just list everything I did, isn't that the story of what I did? And I would say it's not, but I want to hear your answer first.
Yeah, definitely. I just want to also kind of follow up on what you were saying. I think you put it really nicely. From the recent book I was reading, which is called, I believe, Design is a Storytelling, and it's also a part of our book club book. Really recommend the book. I have this quote written down and I really like it because it kind of associates with what you were saying. The quote goes like, a story is a winding path and not a straight and efficient line.
And the problem today with a lot of portfolios is that everybody's trying to replicate that straight and efficient line, that everything were going fine, everything followed the process, checked the boxes. You did the research, you did exploration, you did prototypes, you presented it, everybody accepted it, and then it's kind of going live. But it's never, ever, ever a case. I think I've been working for about more than 10 years in the industry, as well as Ioana. And so we know it's never a case. It's really never happening straightforwardly.
So your goal is to actually tell an interesting story that hiring manager will, A, realize, oh, you did a homework and you put the best case study up front or the case study that is associated with my company challenges, for example. And B, you would also be able to communicate that it was not a straight and efficient line. It was the story that was thriving on obstacles, delays, moments of revelation, etc.
And at the end, you arrive to a result. It's never a straight path. It's really a challenge of telling that interesting story that hooks an attention for just a scanning experience under, let's say, one minute to tell the story. And when we are about to start telling the story,
when we're designing the case study page, obviously, I would recommend always to design the homepage with like a little kind of layout that you think about. It's going to be the most efficient story. But if you don't have time and if you really need to build a portfolio, you can also go for the Notion page or even like a Figma slides, whatever. Point is, when you're designing your storytelling experience for the hiring manager to look through your project, you really need to design first and foremost for the attention. They will only have a
couple of minutes or actually one minute to go through the project, they will not be reading the text. And so I guess that's the first and most important principle. Don't throw a bunch of text on the hiring manager because like 90% of the people do it today and nobody actually has the time to read this, right? Remember about the empathy.
People don't have time to read. If they have 100 more portfolios to go through, they will most likely never ever going to read your text unless this is a very understaffed position, which is not the case anymore in the world. And maybe they have only 10 portfolios to go through. Again, very unrealistic. So in the current market environment, you have hundreds of portfolios and you really need to get to the point right away.
To get to the point, it means getting rid of all those static checking boxes type of sections in your portfolio. For example, a very common story people are saying is this, again, linear efficient line when they say, I did the research, here are the insights, here is the persona, here is the user story, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and here is the result.
That's not the titles of your story that you have to optimize for. The story will be much better if you scan through it. Again, remember, you only have like 60 seconds to make an impression. Scanning the titles will be the first thing they will be doing because they don't have time. They will have to scan through the key points. And key points is the title of your case study. And so when they are kind of scanning through the titles, it already needs to tell the story. It already needs to get to the point, find interesting, juicy parts of your project.
that are actually explaining not only the things you did, but also obstacles you went through and explorations and aha moments and revelation moments of your story, of your project.
Now, that was like intro context. But what is really important is that when we are talking about storytelling, and I think that's the actual question you ask, Joanna, so what does it mean to tell a story in your portfolio? I think in today's notion, the consensus of the world, not only in the design industry, but also like anywhere, if you think about media, about the literature, about the art, we all believe that good storytelling goes into three structures, like beginning, middle and end.
For the storytelling of your portfolio, we're kind of trying to imply that in the first part you want to tell the context in which you worked,
So the conditions that were presented to you or the opportunities or the problems that were presented to you or you discovered yourself in the beginning. Then there is an end that was actually, again, the end of the result, impact, the work you did, the life you have improved of someone. And then there is this very important part, which is this curve, right? The rising action, the climax and the falling action when you are telling what really happened.
And if in this kind of curve you fail to explain what really happened, interesting obstacles, interesting aha moments, then you're not telling a story very well. But don't think that the beginning and end is also not important because the beginning is when you hook an attention. And if you're telling a very basic, very boring, like a process reported oriented kind of hook without any interesting hooks that will make me interested in actually going and reading the story, then you're already failing it. You're setting yourself up for
for a failure because you're not hooking my attention to actually increase the motivation for me to read on your case study. And then at the end also, if you went through an interesting story, like you have all the obstacles and aha moments and you arrived at a very boring result with no measurements, with just, I think so, or with like, here is the result we delivered, here's a prototype and there is literally no impact, nothing that could actually signify that it was a project worth doing.
then also you're kind of finishing very flat without like a feel of revelation at the end of the story, right? So all of the parts are super important. While you have to put a lot of accent in the middle part, you should really also pay attention to the beginning and end because if the beginning and end are not solid and strong enough, then it doesn't matter how much effort you put into your middle because at the end of the day, it will not make any sense, right?
Speaking about, again, the structure and what does it mean to tell a good story is really paying attention to the story structure of three parts. In the beginning, thinking about the hook, the middle, thinking about the aha moments and key moments that happened to you in this project. And at the end, really finish it strong with the solid evidence of
or at least understanding of who did you bring the value to, who benefited from the work you did. And that needs to be solid. Otherwise, it defeats the purpose of creating the case study. Any other things you want to throw here before we move on to maybe some tips as well? I think you covered a lot of things that I also had in mind. I just want to say that
my very short version of what a story means is essentially creating some tension there. Like a story means tension at some point. So it's like when you watch a movie, it's the same kind of vibe that you want to produce. Like we were excited, we started this and then we realized and that's the tension moment. Oh, wait, this is not what we...
thought it was? Why was it not what we thought it was? What was the twist in that project? And then is there any conflict? Is there any like business was pushing us to do it faster, but research needed more time for it? Create that sort of
tension that creates curiosity and anticipation. Just employ storytelling techniques from movies and books and just bring them in your portfolio. You have to have that arc, right, where something happens that kind of changes the path or you learn something in research that's different from what your assumptions were and how did you adjust. And
How did you course correct? And so that kind of, let's say, changing of paths, changing direction is what's really interesting in the wild, in the real UX projects, because no UX project is linear. Nothing goes as planned ever, right?
Right. So there's always something that needs to be course corrected and changed and adjusted. What were the adjustments and how did you discover them? That's my, let's say, in a nutshell, what I feel storytelling is all about in UX portfolio case studies. So now let's jump to the tips, tips, tips, tips. What are your tips and tricks?
Love it. I definitely love how you always find a way to put it nicely. And I think you're right. If answer to the end of the story comes too easily, then the story is dull and you basically didn't make it outstanding and people didn't probably engage with this.
It's really about adding those stakes to the story that makes it interesting to keep on reading. About the tips, I don't want to overwhelm everyone with too many things because I have a lot of ideas, but I will kind of throw the most, I feel like, effective ones for you to actually be effective in telling the story. And the first I already kind of partly mentioned is really about
Thinking about an intriguing start of your story, it doesn't need to reveal, but it needs to give you an idea about the intriguing challenge that is happening there. So, for example, starting from the hook means starting from an action that yields a curiosity to keep on reading. And if you think about the movies or books,
And if you start watching the movie from a very boring scene, nothing happens, people live ordinary life, there is no tension, there is no music, nothing, nothing that supports the curiosity, you probably lose an interest and you move on to the next video and the next movie, right? The same happens with the storytelling of your case study. You really need to think about what was this curious action that I need to sort of unpack in the next sections.
The next tip I'll give is actually follow the rule of 1-3-1. And that's like a universal rule. I see a lot of good case studies are following, good case studies that are winning in standing out and making an effective point. The rule is actually pretty simple. So 1-3-1 goes for one line of title, three lines of text.
one image. Very simple. It's a very scannable way for you presenting the information. In the title, it's not about the step you followed. So it's not about the stage of the design, the personas, the whatever research. It's about the key point from the research. If you're talking about the research, don't say, here's my persona. That's like a room tour. You need to focus on the real estate or highlighting the point.
That means that instead of saying, here's the persona, you want to say, we were surprised to learn that this persona or this user struggled with X, Y, Z, right? You really want to sort of inject the point in your title and it needs to be quick and to the point. Three lines on text, you want to expand on how you learned this, interesting extra detail to this point, right? But it really needs to kind of converge all the bunch of insights you had into a quick section that follows this
one-three-one rule. Then if you are focusing on like a storytelling, this arc that is going up, like the rise in action, the climb and the fall in action, this part is basically the juicy part of your storytelling, but it needs to be filled with small stories. So every of those sections, which
which would, for example, follow one-three-one rule, will be small pieces of story that in its own are also story with the climax and the raise in action and the fall in action, right? So to keep the reader being engaged, you need ups and downs and a sense of completion on the way to figure out that result. So you kind of want to make sure that, again, there is like a quick point,
quick idea about what happened in that part of the project and then one image that supports it. An image is obviously very important for the busy hiring manager persona because the image is not just about throwing a bunch of your sticky notes and nobody can read them or another one I could never possibly read is for example the user flows. I have no idea what that means right? You want to actually create a storytelling infographics as well so instead of you throwing a screenshot the
Design it. Design it for attention so that it highlights the point of that mini story, a story arc that you have injected in the middle of your project. And then all those small stories, they usually lead to the climax. And that climax is a transformational moment. For the example that Ioana was giving, if you were having the pushback from your either clients or stakeholders, and there is a lot of like explorations you need to unlock things.
and find the solution to the problem. Then the climax of your storytelling case study is this transformational moment. What really happened that led you to the result that everybody was happy about? Climax is a hard part. It's always about a lot of reflection and looking through the complexity of the project you went through, but arriving to the most interesting cracking moment of the project.
But if you struggle with like, what is climax? How should I say this? How should I reflect this? For example, in our community, we have the workshop to unlock that climax moment. What is actually my story all about, right? That we're trying to do every month. And also you can read the book such as Storyworthy or Design is Storytelling because it speaks about a lot of examples on what it means to have this climax of your story. And then last but not least...
At the end, your story has to have a strong resolution. So it should answer the question, did you? Yes. Or did you not finish it? Or did you actually arrive to the solution to the result? Did you impact somebody's life? And the tip is here is simple, right? Just focus on the impact.
If it was measurable, that's what you want to lead with. If it was immeasurable, at least find testimonials, maybe screenshots from the Slack. Maybe if you are not working there anymore, you can use the quote from the PM you worked with, the testimonial from them working with you. Whatever is the way for you to support that the result was actually real is the way for you to go. So I'm going to stop here. I'm pretty sure maybe you, Joanna, also have one or two tips for us.
Well, again, I think you touch on so many relevant or important or the points that I feel are most meaningful. My top tip would be, it's also going to feel a bit abstract, but I'm going to try to de-abstractize it, but it's showing personality. And then the question is, what does it mean to show personality in your portfolio? But I've seen portfolios where I could
kind of get a glimpse into that person's way of existing. So it's not just about tell me your hobbies and show me photos with you and your family on vacation. It's not about that. It's just about some quirky ways of writing stuff, right? So some people insert some humor, some people insert some self-deprecating humor, which shows that they have self-awareness or they can make fun of themselves, which is an important thing I appreciate in people, right? Just
not taking yourself too seriously. And then maybe there's that way of using words that's very particular to you. And I don't know. Yeah, maybe it's just having fun while you build this portfolio. And when you enjoy telling the story, your personality is also manifesting, right? It's expressing right there in that joke. So
I feel that we should infuse everything we do, collaborating with people. So for me, something that changed over the past couple of years is this aspect of having fun at work, which in the past I thought it's unacceptable. Work is not supposed to be fun. We don't crack jokes here. We're very serious. We have to be professionals.
And now I realize that just having fun with your team, which is not having fun all the time because you also need to do the work, but just infusing those moments of personality and fun that are reflected in your everyday life at work should also be reflected in your portfolio. And maybe things that you're passionate about should also be surfaced in that narrative, right? So things such as
here's the part I enjoyed most about this project. It's just talking to users and observing them struggling with my solution and then having to deal with the fact that, oops, I came up with a very bad solution initially and I had to adjust it. And so just telling people what you're about. Is this the part that you like? Is this the part that felt challenging to you? Again, it's that aspect of showing what you're about, which
Can feel abstract, but if you think about it, it's just highlighting what you like, what you don't like, what was exciting, what was less exciting and cracking a joke here and there or not even a joke, but I don't know, saying things in a maybe funny way, tongue in cheek, kind of those kinds of things that we read in books and see in movies as well.
So that's my tip. I really, really love this point. For example, one of the exercises we're doing during that workshop is I like to ask in the very beginning of the workshop before people started thinking about their project and getting so like wrapped up with the details. I like to ask them really, what would other people who worked with you say about you? And that's like a starting line. So you reflect on what people would say about you. And then after some kind of exercises,
I would ask them to look back into what people would say about them and try to add that to the case study as this like nuggets about your personality, about you being real, working as a human being in the project, right? So thinking about what people say about you and then trying to inject it in your case study is also a way to go. So I really love that you made this point about don't forget.
to say who you are in this project because at the end of the day we're working with the people okay so now we're close to wrapping this conversation up i'm very happy that we touched on a lot of interesting points i think we have good storytelling right here in our podcast at
episode, we have a narrative. And I want to remind everyone that you can support these conversations by rating us or just submitting topics for future conversations. We want to make sure we're talking about the relevant painful things in our roles as designers. And so submit your questions
anywhere on Instagram, on S2X Talks or directly to Anfisa or me. Rate us on your platform of choice. And yeah, I don't know if I missed anything, Anfisa. Don't forget to look into the Hatch Conference. You'll find the link under this episode. I hope to see as many of you as possible. Yes, please DM us. We want to meet you. Okay, so thanks everyone and have a great rest of the day. Bye. Bye-bye.
