Tips for your first UX design portfolio
So you’ve taken a few UX classes and figured out that you enjoy human-centered design, design as a means to solve problems, or even just the process of going from ideation to a prototype…and now you want to land your first UX design internship.
You might have already stumbled across portfolios of interns at top tech companies and thought, “How the heck do I create a portfolio like that?? I don’t even know where to start”. Everyone has to start somewhere. I am going to include information I wish someone told me before I started making my first portfolio site.
1. Buy a domain
Doesn’t www.[yourname].com or [yourname].me look a lot more professional than [yourname].wixsite.com/portfolio? There are a lot of affordable options to purchase domains as well as articles you can look up about this. Some examples include Namecheap and Google Domains.
2. Use a website builder like Squarespace
Unless you are confident in your web development skills or enthusiastic about building your own website, I would recommend looking at website builders as an option for building and hosting your site. Squarespace is one of the pricier options out there but look at it as an investment that is well worth the price.
Check out Alex Gerrese’s site for a successful portfolio built with Squarespace.
One downside to Squarespace is that your portfolio may look very similar to a lot of other designers also using Squarespace or the same template. Coding your own site gives you a lot more freedom in terms of styling, but website builders also offer some degree of customization.
Ultimately, you want your portfolio to look as polished as possible since you are applying to a design role. The work you present is more important than the overall look and feel of your portfolio, but the design of your site should not detract from your work either.
3. Have at least 2 polished case studies
A case study is a write up of your process for a given project.
Some artifacts you can include in your case study:
- Initial user research
- Competitive analysis
- Mood boards
- Personas
- Sketches
- Wireframes
- Images of paper prototype
- Interactive prototype
- High fidelity mockups
You do not have to include all of these artifacts in every case study. Pick and choose the artifacts that are most presentable and make most sense to include. It is alright to go back and re-do wireframes or mockups to make them look better if you are not proud of the original design. Choose artifacts that will help you tell the story of how you came up with your final designs.
You will often be asked to do a portfolio walk-through during an interview for a UX design position. It is critical to have at least two strong case studies because the interviewer will most likely ask you to go through two projects, if not more. Write your case studies knowing that a recruiter will be reading them to learn about your process and skills.
4. Include compelling visuals
When I was in the process of making my first portfolio, I was really confused about how people made beautiful images with the screens they designed on an actual device. I’m talking about images like this…
There are a variety of ways to do this. You could do it yourself in Photoshop or Sketch (google ‘free [insert device name] mockups’). You could use a mockup generator where all you have to do is upload your image. Just make sure you properly credit images where necessary.
Facebook’s design site also has a lot of resources for device mockups and mockups with hands as well. (See http://facebook.design/devices)
5. Ask your friends for feedback
Sometimes when you are heads down working on something for a long time, it’s easy to let small mistakes slip by. Whenever you are done (lol…you’ll find that you’re never actually done and constantly iterating on your portfolio) with the first version of your site, show your site to your design friends and non-design friends to get their input. They might point out something that needs a better explanation or something that could be taken out.
That’s all I have for now…hopefully you found it useful! 😊
A couple more useful links related to portfolios and design interviews:
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