Creating content takes too long—hard to document the UX process while doing the actual work

Why Read This from an HCI Perspective

This article is meaningful for HCI/UX practitioners and researchers because it shows how portfolios and social media are not just promotional channels, but ways to ‘evidence’ and ‘reconstruct’ real work experience. In particular, it reveals how the burden of documentation can function as a cognitive load during ongoing research, design, and validation—and how documentation can even disrupt creative flow. It makes you rethink the balance between real-world workflows and self-expression.

CIT's Commentary

From a CIT perspective, the core of this piece is that ‘doing good UX work’ and ‘showing good work’ are different design problems. Many people treat documentation as a matter of willpower, but in practice it’s an interaction design issue—how to embed recording into the work flow. For example, using low-friction documentation systems such as automatic screenshot capture, short voice memos, or decision logs by version can greatly reduce the cost of reconstructing work afterward. That said, there’s a need for caution around a culture that treats social media visibility as a proxy measure of competence. In UX work—especially where NDAs, team collaboration, and context-dependent judgment are common—it’s difficult to translate your skill into only publicly shareable deliverables. Ultimately, what matters is designing a system that leaves learning-worthy traces without damaging the context of the work.

Questions to Consider While Reading

• Q.What is the most effective documentation habit for minimizing the documentation burden without disrupting the real project flow?
• Q.When judging the quality of a portfolio, how should we separate the weight of social media visibility from actual design capability?
• Q.What are good ways to leave a record of the work process in a form that can be shared in environments with NDAs or other sensitive collaboration constraints?