Problem:

The users of our portfolio website product, Showspace, were in need of more personalized pages to share with recruiters for job searches, and their network for various career-building activities.

The current design was bland -- it only contained their portfolio projects! There were no avatar images, bios, locations, or any social links listed on it.

From a product perspective, we were also experiencing too much dropoff between first-time users signing up, and then creating portfolios. We needed to make the product more appealing.

The URLs were also ugly with a route that looked like showspace.so/s/7a9958cf-6cdf-4680-a7c6-e9a7a09913fb

Solution:

We updated our Next.js and Supabase app design and functionality to include all the necessary features for users to create personalized profile pages. This included an Intro section, LinkedIn, Twitter, and personal website URLs, Location, and a Cover Image.

As a bonus, we also included the ability to have named URLs, for example showspace.so/s/david.

We also added in two smaller and less noticeable UX improvements along the way.

Improved Signin and Signup redirects - Instead of being directed back to the Signup or Signin page, then directed to your profile, you're taken straight to your profile!
Signin gating if not a user - Have you ever forgotten which email you signed up under, then you took a guess when you signed in, all to find out the company created you another account!? It's annoying when that happens, and that will fortunately never happen again at Showspace. If you try to login under an email that doesn't exist, you will get an error blocking you from logging in and directing you to the signup page.

Team:

David Head - Software Engineering & UI/UX Design
- Led the design and development process end-to-end on Next.js / Supabase app
Adam Wright - Product Strategy
- Prioritized and specced the feature set to optimize for solving our user conversion rate issue
Jason Bourne - Next.js Advisor
- Advised on Next.js architecture, optimizing performance, and minimizing technical debt
Mark Burggraf - Supabase Advisor
- Advised on backend technical architecture and performance optimization
Taiwo Oyeniyi - Next.js Advisor
- Pair programmed with David to store user data in Context to persist across the app

Adding user profiles and named URLs to portfolios