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Are you boring your interviewer by over-explaining context?
How to use the power of narrative to engage interviewers with your design portfolio.
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I was reminded of a common mistake I used to make when I was recently mentoring junior designers with their portfolios.
For designers with only a few projects to their name, I know there’s a temptation to over-explain what you did on them in detail. Nothing might seem more awful than quickly summarizing your work and having nothing else to your name.
But you may make a critical mistake when you do that: you might provide too much background and context.
To explain why this is a problem, let me walk you through how I struggled to talk about one of my first design projects: a Gesture-based Interface for surgeons to coordinate during Laparoscopic Cholecystectomies.
You can never fully explain the context, and it’s better not to try
I’m pretty sure you have no idea what I just said in the sentence above. To adequately explain the context of that project, here are the questions I’d have to answer:
- What is Laparoscopic Surgery, and how does it differ from regular surgery?