UI Portfolio Question: Should I make an interactive experience?

[rpeg]

I’m applying for a UI position at a company that literally does Minority Report style interactive experiences for presentations and data visualization. By literally I mean that the founder of the company created the Minority Report concepts for the movie and turned that into an actual business.

Anyway, professionally I am all over the place but one place I am in is in UI design. However I have not spent a lot of time putting together any traditional UI design portfolio. So my question is about what counts as a strong UI design portfolio and whether or not developing an interactive experience showing my UI would miss the mark so to speak.

In other words, I actually don’t have a lot of UI experience in the workplace because I’ve mostly worked at a front-end developer in a more technical capacity. However I have UI/UX work relating to my personal, small business projects. I’m debating whether I should stick to a traditional portfolio with flat images showing UI design or if I should make an interactive experience example.

I don’t want to end up doing something that may be way off.

[Experience_Matters]

The interface of your portfolio itself counts as a portfolio item as well.
I would even state it is the most important portfolio item for a UI designer, as this will be the one most visitors will interact with. This is also one of the items where you have “carte blanche” … so it would give a good idea what you can come up with if you get the freedom.
The chances a visitor will visit the websites of your portfolio is smaller.

Just make sure that the UI explains your strong points as a UI designer very well.
It has to fit in the story you want to tell.
You can put in as much UI gimmicks as you want, people looking for someone to hire will not just come to your website to play with it.