Building an Online Portfolio

Where to Begin...

I am starting a new passion project that I have been interested in beginning for the past few years. I always let life get in my way, but now I am shifting my mindset and starting this journey. 

As I have begun thinking about how exactly to build a successful and visually captivating portfolio, I am ambushed by this feeling of "Where the heck do I even start?" There are infinite possibilities, and there are an infinite amount of roads I could take...there are too many options! Starting a new journey, the first step always feels like the hardest, and here I am facing this same struggle.

A Word of Advice

To be honest, I have had so much schooling and I am hesitant to enroll in another program, like a bootcamp or class, to help me build this portfolio. I want this work to be a challenge and I want this work to be something that I have created and iterated and built without a prompt or a case study. I want to do the work with my own brain and hands. I do want to clarify, there is absolutely nothing wrong or less challenging about building a portfolio by joining classes or bootcamps, it is just not the path I am choosing to take. 

This has put me in an interesting predicament, however. The desire to build a portfolio completely on my own without help, yet with no idea where to start? How does anyone complete anything without any sort of direction or guidance? Especially when the Instructional Design community is built on a foundation of collaboration, community, and support. I am feeling a deep appreciation for the first scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers in this moment. 

I think the most important piece of advice I can give myself is to not take myself so seriously, especially when it comes to building e-learning and training solutions. Attempting to navigate through the world of Instructional Design is not something a successful designer can necessarily do completely solo. Not just that, but why? It makes more sense to utilize the community to learn and grow within the community that to try to thrive outside of it. Sounds a little self-important to be completely honest.

Change Happens!

Interestingly enough, even writing my thoughts on paper and allowing them to develop organically has led me to a completely calm sense of where to begin on building my first portfolio: research within the Instructional Design community with the intention of finding a great starting place for building a portfolio. I also have a few questions to think about when conducting research on where to begin that may assist me in finding a good starting point:

• What is an Instructional Designer's portfolio best used for?
• Who should the target audience be?
• What is the best way to set up a strong portfolio to attract clients?
• How long should this project take?
• Is it ever complete, or does it continually evolve?
• What is the best way to host an online portfolio to show my ID work?

A Starting Point

I think most luckily for myself, I was able to find (over the years) a stellar ID community in a few places. First, Devlin Peck's online community of developers has been instrumental in getting my thoughts in order and building confidence in which direction to even start pointing myself in. Additionally, the Articulate community is full of incredibly wonderful developers and designers that I have been able to learn and grow using the advice and pointers from them. 

The first step I have discovered is to build a project that showcases my work and my critical thinking, problem solving, and design skills. This endeavor may take quite some time based on what I have seen, but most importantly is to set up a schedule of time in order to work through this project and build it successfully. So, with that, off I go to begin step on of the project, which is to decide what problem can be solved with an e-learning solution.

Cheers!