The visuals of thinking

So how do designers display their work? I have been ruminating about the best way to present a portfolio that showcases the thinking and extends the viewer's impression beyond subjective stylistic preferences.

AIGA, the United States' professional design association offers advice to designers in 4 Easy Steps to Create a Beautiful Design Portfolio. While the article recommends pairing explanatory text with images, the focus is on beauty, and the main copywriting advice is to explain “uptick in business” and “customer acquisition rates”. Yet, not all design communication is concerned with sales – many projects are about behavioural change, imparting important information or introducing new ideas, where success is not measured in dollars.

So why is it important for designers to shift perceptions of their profession beyond aesthetics? Since designers are tasked with defining and solving the problem, showcasing the work leading up to the beautiful end product is crucial to understanding an individual’s true skill.

Arun Pradhan discusses his company’s approach to a pitch request. It’s a great story: instead of quoting on the nine e-learning modules outlined by one of Australia’s largest banks, DeakinPrime successfully pitched to use design thinking to reassess the brief, with the possibility that the solution would require something other than an e-learning suite. At project end, instead of learning about compliance through e-modules, users of the platform-based solution were inherently compliant. 

Now, imagine including this work in a portfolio: a series of images would merely show us that DeakinPrime has experience in designing and producing web platforms. However, the approach is much more interesting and allows us to understand how this organisation thinks and adds value. The value is not in an attractive interface; the value is in a solution that enforces compliance and therefore removes an opportunity for corporate misbehaviour.

The State Library of Queensland has developed Design Minds, an award-winning design thinking framework as part of Queensland's design syllabus for senior school. It is a synthesis of the best frameworks, including Stanford d.school's, and may provide a simple model to better showcase work. The three main areas are Inquire, Ideate and Implement, providing enough scope to discuss the full project: defining the problem, brainstorming, testing, and measuring success. 

While it’s tempting to display successful projects as a series of beautiful images, a more comprehensive overview of a project would reflect on the inquire, ideate and implementation stages to showcase the thorough investigation and clever thinking behind the beautiful images – design as more than 'lipstick'.

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Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash 

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