Anti-portfolio design concept.

Just as a creative exercise, I thought about designing an imaginary site for my roommate, Dave. He's extremely talented in many verticals, but tonight I just imagined him as a web designer, trying to design a portfolio to showcase his work.

The truth is, designing a plain portfolio seemed boring. I've been reading a lot about designing web portfolios... and most of the advice is the same. Everyone's portfolio has the same format, in one way or another, and I wanted to do something different. I wanted to design something that would showcase his expertise, innovative thinking, and passion. Instead, I wanted to give Dave an anti-portfolio—something that showed everything but his work.



I felt that Dave would have a simple, clean and focused experience (much like google)... but instead, centralizes on one thing: "What problem are you trying to solve?". This is probably the single most important question any designer can ask themselves. This also positions Dave as someone who is a problem solver, not just a designer. This "portfolio" is actually not a portfolio. It's an experience.

To me, I'm interested in what happens after you click "Solve". How Dave handles the results page will show his technical ability, as well as his perspective on how to solve a problem. The results page could look like a simple search results page... but I'd expect much-much more from Dave. What happens after the click is what will make me understand how he approaches problem solving... and this, could be more valuable than clicking through a typical web portfolio.




...and here's the "LOL" tab. It just brings up a short description with a couple of links. This could be filled with personality, and tie back in with the "what problem are you trying to solve" theme. I figured, positioning himself as a problem solver is a differentiator... and could be valuable to a large company like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

If this was your anti-portfolio, what kind of innovation could you bring to it? What would your results page look like?