Essential Content in Your UX Design Portfolio
I am new to User Experience— What do I need in my UX portfolio?
UX Design students at the UX Design Immersive Cohort at General Assembly asked during an interactive conversation:
What do I need in my UX portfolio? What can I show if I have little experience in the design field?
As a design leader of Global UX teams and a member of the UX Experts Advisory Board at AQUENT, a world leader in creative, digital, and marketing staffing, I have interviewed hundreds of candidates for roles at different levels of experience for many organizations. From that perspective, you get the chance to see the good, the bad and the ugly in desgin portfolios from aspiring candidates.
Here are some of the things hiring managers look for:
Give the reader the story — Project Context and Summary
Recruiters, UX hiring Managers and portfolio reviewers, heck even folks who stumble upon your online portfolio want to understand the context of the project. Your portfolio needs to provide some of the following key elements:
- Who is the client, target organization or industry?
- Was this a team effort, or a solo project? If you were working with a team, what was your role, what other roles were involved?
- Who is the end user? What Personas were you designing for?
- What was the summary of the project —Use a structured approach to frame the summary. You could leverage a method like S.T.A.R. (Situation, Task, Action, Results) or P.A.R. (Problem, Action, Results).
Here is an example:
Client: Freight and Logistics Software as a Service (SaaS)
The Team: UX Director, UX Designer, Researcher, Product Manager and Developer
My Role: UX Designer
Target Persona: “Molly Logistics Manager” who does “x” and is responsible for “y.”
Executive Summary
- Problem: The logistics product was encountering adoption challenges in the market place. Through UX Research the team uncovered critical pain points that needed to be addressed in the “z” module.
- Action: In collaboration with Product Management, Technology and User Experience, identified the key target personas, defined user stories, task flow diagrams, and key bottlenecks in the process.
- My contribution: Built low and medium fidelity prototypes, making emphasis on identifying opportunities to solve key pain points.
- Results: Consolidated “n number” task lists into a single dashboard providing at a glance view of workload and priority tasks. The project was approved and received funding for implementation and global deployment.
Not just “pretty please,” show your process
Many design portfolios place the main emphasis on the finished, polished product. You see project thumbnails that show an image of an iPhone or web app. However, the polished design comp does not let the hiring manager know what your skills are, what process you followed, or what methods you used. You may include high level examples, providing some context to allow the reviewer to understand what the process is.
Here is an example:
Sketching & Prototyping — sketched in different levels of fidelity, both individually as well as in collaboration with team members. Presented to stakeholders during design reviews. In addition, worked with the UX researcher building the prototype and supporting sessions with end users to validate the design.
Curate the content with care — your future job is at stake and so is your personal brand
One of the worst portfolios sent by a candidate was sent as a link to download a ZIP file. Once I opened the file, I found that it included over 150 project folders. I didn’t know where to start. Neither recruiters, nor hiring managers have the time to figure it out. You need to make it easy to them.
For some organization, you may be able to share a curated PDF document with projects that are highly relevant to the role that you are applying for. Other companies and hiring managers may have a more stringent requirement and would only consider online portfolios. In this case, it may be a little more difficult for you to curate specifc content on a role-by-role bases.
My advice — in your application, include the link to the most relevant project for the role, allowing the recruiter or the hiring manager to navigate from that point. As an alternative, you could include a small number of direct links to relevant projects from your portfolio as an addendum to your cover letter or your resume.
Show your opennes to learn, take risks and try new things
Folks who are new to the design field, whether they are new graduates or are switching careers, ask about what kind of projects they can include in their portfolio if they have little and in some cases no professional experience.
My short answer is — organize and curate your class projects. They are great examples to include. In addition, if you are interested in a particular field or technology, it is perfectly acceptable to include a personal project. You can showcase your interest, and your willingness to try something new. While personal projects may not have real life results, you should present them in your portofolio with a similar structure as the other pieces — project context, summary and structure, telling the reader the story.
Here is an example of a personal project.
Apple Watch Concept App — Before the Apple Watch was launched, I designed three concept apps for three different personas: Barbara Business (Payroll App), Freddy Fitness (Health & Fitness App) and Samantha Social (Scoail Media App).
Present your design work with confidence
Sharing your portfolio with the recruiter or the hiring manager is only the first step. Many organizations will invite you to the onsite interview and will ask you to present your work. It is important to prepare and curate the content of that presentation focusing on selecting a couple of projects relevant to the skills that they are looking for.
Do yourself a favor and read these two articles written by Mike Monteiro from Mule Design Studio.
Practice the presentation of the case studies for different situations:
- Phone and In Person Interview — Short duration format (2 to 5 minutes),
- In Person Presentation — long (10 minutes or so).
- Make sure you provide context to your audience — follow the S.T.A.R. (Situation, Task, Action, Results) or P.A.R. (Problem, Action, Results) method.
- Avoid the 13 mistakes designers make to screw up client presentation (as Mike describes).
- Be confident, be open, be truthful, and most important, have fun.
Thanks to Nick Finck for the invitation to speak to an engaging group of students at General Assembly.
For more information about UX Portfolios, I recommend you check these resources:
- Ian Fenn — Designing a UX Portfolio (the “Lobster Book” published by O'Reilly Media). Ian’s site is full of goodies.
- Tips for onsite UX interviews by Satyam Kantamneni published by UXPA International Magazine
- Stephen Gates podcast The Crazy One and the episode on Design Portfolios
For more curated resources check this “UX Leadership and Skills Development Library”
Este artículo está disponible en español / this article is available in Spanish “Contenido esencial en su portafolio de diseño UX”
About the Author — Jose Coronado helps companies drive results by developing and implementing UX, innovation and transformation programs.
Twitter @jcoronado1
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