Austin Briggs: Overall Best Portfolio Winner, Undergraduate Design Portfolio Contest
Austin Briggs, a rising sophomore pursuing Mechanical Engineering and Business, is the first freshman to ever win the annual Overall Best Portfolio award in the Undergraduate Design Portfolio Contest.
The contest organised by the College of Engineering is open to all undergraduates in the school and aims to encourage students to create a design portfolio that displays the skills and experiences they have accrued over their years at the university and beyond. A strong online presence is critical to obtaining internships and employments in today’s job market and this competition aims to help students get a head start on displaying their their skills in the best manner possible. Awards are presented by class as well as one award for Overall Best Portfolio.
“Although winning it was a great experience, to me the more important part was being able to see other people’s portfolios as well as getting the comments back from the judges to be able to refine [the portfolio],” Briggs said, stressing on how useful the experience of designing a portfolio was. “In the end,” he continued, “It’s about everybody having a better portfolio so that when they are applying for internships and jobs they can have a better leg up compared to the other applicants.”
The contest was the catalyst that pushed Briggs to make his first portfolio, a website that features high school projects with his school’s robotics team, personal interest projects, and projects with the rocket propulsion group at Boston University.
The simplicity and minimalist design of Briggs’ portfolio featured his projects in a clean and meaningful way. “One thing that I think set my portfolio apart from the others is I spent a lot of time breaking down some of the technical components into easy to understand words or pictures,” he explained. “I believe that that really helped present the engineering rigor that I put into my parts without making it sound like a technical report or something that’s difficult to understand.”
Beyond sharing a basic resume and contact details, Briggs expressed his passion for the engineering, “Engineering is the field that is developing the products that shape tomorrow… Engineering pushes the envelope of new ideas and expands the world’s horizons towards a safer and more connected world. I’m beyond excited to do what I love.” For Briggs one of the most important aspects of building a web based portfolio was portraying his projects exactly how he wanted to. He developed his portfolio using the web development platform Wix because it afforded him the ability to highly customize the website portray his work how he wanted to.
Briggs believes that participating in the contest is a valuable experience in itself and encourages others to benefit from the feedback and exposure. “Creating a portfolio and just having it there and being able to get the feedback from everyone is a good start and it’s definitely something that employers look out for,” Briggs said. He explained that when he was applying for internships for the summer the employers all looked at his portfolio and emphasised that if he didn’t have one that would be a missed opportunity for him. “So even if you don’t think that you have what it takes to get a win, making a resume and being able to improve on it is a great way to kind of your professional career and give yourself a head start.”