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Building a Portfolio

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Balancing Success and Failure in Your Narrative

3:24 with Devin O'Bryan

Empathy—a powerful force when showing off your work. Your potential employers or clients don’t just care about how you succeed. They also care about how you learn from failure. We’ll dig a little deeper into this concept in Video Three.

New Terms:

  • Comeback Story -- a return by a well-known person, especially an entertainer or sports player, to the activity in which they have formerly been successful.

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    Just like our 8198 [SOUND] showing, lets do it again. 0:01
    [SOUND] I was doing so good. 0:05
    It was so good. 0:06
    [SOUND] I just spit, was that the. 0:08
    [SOUND] We all make mistakes. 0:11
    But let's face it, humanity loves a comeback story. 0:14
    Where a return to favor is made by someone after a period of challenge or failure. 0:19
    People care about redemption. 0:26
    So it stands to reason, that is why it is a necessity for 0:28
    you to address areas of struggle. 0:33
    And resulting growth in your portfolio. 0:35
    Taylor Aiken was a brilliant intern of mine a few years back. 0:38
    Not only was she a skilled visual designer, but 0:42
    she was also meticulous in her documentation. 0:45
    As a result, Taylor's portfolio is a thorough and 0:48
    thought out collection of content and case studies. 0:52
    In particular, I wanna call out a very professional example of a comeback story 0:55
    with her case study on IBM's award-winning Carbon Design System. 1:00
    Taylor starts by explaining that Carbon is a visual design system 1:05
    implemented company-wide across all of IBM and 1:09
    was started for IBM's flagship cloud product, originally called Bluemix. 1:13
    She goes on to explain, not only the history of Carbon, but 1:19
    she diplomatically lets us know where she and 1:23
    her fellow designers were failing before Carbon's existence. 1:26
    She points out, although the various interfaces had some similarities, 1:30
    they lacked a cohesive semblance and user experience across the product. 1:35
    An additional challenge was that with so many different teams of designers and 1:40
    engineers, it was nearly impossible to ensure that all teams across Bluemix were 1:45
    implementing the updates and design changes in a timely fashion. 1:50
    She then points out the needs of Bluemix's users and 1:56
    how Carbon went about solving for those struggles. 2:00
    The point here is that she was willing to discuss the areas that she and 2:04
    her team had to overcome, in order to become successful. 2:09
    She ends with, while we have three parts up and 2:14
    running, we understand that this work is never done. 2:18
    Carbon is a living, breathing product that grows and updates weekly. 2:22
    It adapts with the product as needed and 2:28
    any new IBM cloud products that may adopt it in the future. 2:32
    The reason her approach is successful, 2:37
    is that she is taking a judgement free stance in her narration. 2:39
    Note that she's not calling out any one person or team, to make them look bad. 2:44
    Instead, she's simply stating the reasoning behind her and 2:50
    her team's decisions, while admitting what wasn't working. 2:54
    Here's your takeaway. 2:58
    Discussing where you went wrong isn't a weakness. 3:00
    Instead, it's a sign of creative maturity. 3:03
    However, it's extremely important that you understand 3:08
    that it must be done with a judgement free stance. 3:12
    And with the intent of explaining how you 3:15
    are using that to become more successful in your process. 3:18
    I'll see you in the next video. 3:21

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