Building This Portfolio: A Journey of Growth and Execution

The Procrastination Problem

It's not an exaggeration when I say this has been a rollercoaster. I first planned to update my portfolio in August 2024. For months, I procrastinated. The lesson is clear: procrastination is a thief of time. I believe this delay cost me opportunities along the way.

During that season of waiting, I had a quick portfolio that, in my opinion, wasn't my best work. The responsiveness was particularly lacking—especially on mobile devices. But rather than let that define me, I used it as a learning opportunity.

Drawing Inspiration & Crafting Identity

I sat back and drew inspiration from different portfolios, studying what worked and what didn't. Through this process, I was able to craft this minimalistic, bold design-themed portfolio that speaks to my character and experience.

This portfolio represents my journey: graduating from Ashesi University, applying to eight different graduate schools, getting accepted to all eight, and ultimately landing at Duke University—a choice I would make again every time. It's been a journey of resilience. The key lesson? Regardless of the process, you don't stay down. You take the experience and say, "I'm going to check this box."

Showcasing Growth & Experience

As a Master of Engineering graduate from Pratt School of Engineering at Duke, studying Design Technology & Innovation, I've been able to showcase all the wonderful work I completed during my graduate studies.

Whether it's in the realm of:

• Product design and UX research
• Software engineering
• Experience research
• Speaking on panels
• Serving on university committees
• Organizing symposiums and hackathons focused on AI

I believe I've grown as a person, and this portfolio is a testament to that growth. This blog post is a message to anyone struggling to communicate who they are: just do it.

Execution Over Perfection

If it takes starting small—30 minutes a day, an hour a day—to work on something, trust me, those little minutes will pan out and bring out the best in you.

I want to give a big thank you to my big brother Prophet Israel Agyeman-Prempeh, whose portfolio inspired me to get my own out there. Also, another big thanks to all my friends for being on my neck in a good way—always pushing me to develop my portfolio. I'm grateful for these people and their encouragement.

I also drew tremendous inspiration from Olha Lazarieva's stunning portfolio, which showed me what's possible when design meets purposeful storytelling.

The Technical Journey

I'm grateful for the work I did—from laying out the initial plan in Figma through prompt engineering, to working with the cursor environment and importing all the necessary responsive tools.

I've been able to develop something I'm proud of and apply Next.js to host it on Vercel. Vercel gives me analytics and connects directly to GitHub, so I don't have to worry about manual deployments. After I push updates, the platform automatically runs its build process, checks for lint errors, and deploys. It's beautiful.

I've also secured a custom domain on the platform. It's wonderful to see how technology is evolving—tools are now making processes seamless, from design to development, translation into deeper wireframes, and then into production-ready code.

Lessons Learned

Final Thoughts

I think technology and AI are really helping us become better builders and creators. A lot of thanks to Claude Code for helping me on this journey, and to Figma for being an incredible design companion.

This was a great experience, and I believe anyone trying to get something done can learn from this. I'm humbled that I can share this experience, and I hope it helps inspire you to apply it in any field you find yourself in.

Shalom. Let's go.