For the past four weeks, I have been privileged to work alongside a team of other product designers. We worked on a project per week in the just concluded Sidehustle 4-week Bootcamp. Each week has been previously documented by Chioma Omkwe for week 1, Aremu Gideon for week 2 and Precious Aroyame for week 3. Thus, this documentation talks extensively about how we achieved the project for the final week of the Bootcamp.

Just like every other week, the task for the fourth week came in the early hours of Monday. Being the Team Leader for my group, I woke up to the task for the week on Slack, and I took a screenshot of the task for my team members. This is to make sure that everyone has access to the exact question and attempts to understand the task at hand before the meeting for the morning.

At the first meeting, as usual, I gave everyone a chance to interpret the task their way and a chance to suggest a way it could be done. This way, we always have enough approaches to pick from to execute our tasks. After this phase, we will pick the best approaches, refine them and proceed to execute.

This week, we were to design three portfolio websites, thus, we would need to be in three subgroups within our group as suggested in one of the approaches during the meeting. To achieve diversity and active participation, I gave the task to share everyone into three groups to a group member, and the task to pick the type of portfolio to be designed to another team member. All of these were done at the first meeting.

After the distribution was concluded, it was dropped on the group. Guidelines were given to make the work relatively doable for all team members, and a meeting was scheduled for the night to give progress reports.

The three portfolios that we agreed to design are as follows:

Subroup 1: A Portfolio Website of an Interior Decorator

Subroup 2: A Portfolio Website of a Product Designer

Subroup 3: A Portfolio Website of a Photographer

In subgroup 2, we gave everyone a chance to have individual projects even within the group project. So everyone in the subgroup was asked to design a complete protfolio that they can independently post on their Behance page as this will also give us more portfolios in our group submission. After we came together, someone from the subgroup said they were proud that they could come up with their design and that they were very happy about it.

By our meeting on Wednesday morning, each group was almost done with their design. Also, due to adequate participation during the previous weeks, this final week appears to be a little less tasking because everyone now understands how to go about research to come up with designs that will solve problems and be aesthetically appealing.

Fast forward to our meeting on Friday morning, we were already working on the Behance compilation and bringing all submissions together to assigned pages on Figma. During this meeting as well, we learned how to infuse prototypes into our Behance submissions so that each group can submit their designs and will be able to drop a link to this Hasnode post for people to access it on Behance as well as the prototypes.

Subroup 1 submission: A Portfolio Website of an Interior Decorator

Subroup 2 submission: A Portfolio Website of a Product Designer

Subroup 3 submission: A Portfolio Website of a Photographer

Additional Photographer's Portfolio Website Design

At the end of the project, we came up with an outstanding group presentation titled 'A Compilation of Portfolio Website Designs' which is accessible on Behance.

We also have a twitter post here for this final project

After four taskful weeks, the bootcamp has finally come to an end, and it is believed that just like I have learned a lot, other members of this group have also learned and should be undaunted by the challenges that may arise during the course of this career as we all continue to endlessly develop our skills in this chosen path. This is because the bootcamp has exposed to us how seemingly impossible things can be easily achieved when we adequately research to understand the problems to be solved, and how it can be solved.

In conclusion, I consider my purpose for this adventure achived. Beyond design knowledge that I have acquired during this Bootcamp I have also gained more insights into how to work within a team of people from different backgrounds, who have different orientations and ideologies, but a goal. The bootcamp has also polished my leadership skills as well as my communication abilities, and I am excited I made the choice to particiapte in the bootcamp.