5 things I wish I knew when creating my first UX portfolio

Published in

Bootcamp

6 min readSep 8, 2021

I am sure we can all agree that portfolios are a critical part of our professional life as designers. As much as a fabulous portfolio can attract opportunities and get you your dream job, a not well-structured one can work against your will and stop you from getting any attention! If you are a perfectionist — like myself and many other designers — building a portfolio can take a ton of time and feel like a never-ending project.

In this article, I will share with you a few simple tips that I wish I knew when I was building my first UX portfolio.

1- Don’t re-invent the wheel

There are tons of amazing portfolios out there. You don’t need to have a super unique portfolio with an extraordinary design idea to impress people — especially if you’re a junior designer! This is probably the most important tip I wish I knew a lot earlier.

Think about why are you building a portfolio. Do you want to attract more clients? Or get a better job? In either case, the main goal is to show that you have the right skillsets for the roles you are applying for, you know the process well, and you are open to learn and grow.

Go out there and see how other professionals are presenting their work. Review at least 10 portfolios and choose the top 3 that catch your eyes. Spend some time studying their work and write down what you like/dislike about those.

I’d encourage you to specifically look into two categories while evaluating other websites:

Technical Details:

How many projects do they have in their portfolio?
What sections do they have for each project? ( Title of the project, Project brief, Their UX process, conclusion, Learnings, etc.)
What UX process do they have? (For example, if it’s a double diamond model it includes 4 stages of discover, define, design, deliver)
How much detail do they provide in each section? (How many paragraphs do they have? do they use pictures, videos, tables, or is it just text? In each section, do they talk about the results only, or the full process?)
What design deliverables do they have? (User journey map, user flow, persona, empathy map, site map, etc.)
How do they start the project? (What opening and hero are they using?)
How do they end the project?

Aesthetic & UI:

How does their landing page look?
How is their header designed? (For example, it contains a logo, name, and sub-pages)
How many sub-pages do they have? (About, Contact, Work, etc.)
How is each project laid out?
What kind of spacing are they using to make things easy to read and visually appealing?
What font style and font sizes are they utilizing?
What color palette are they using?
What UI elements are they using in their website to show buttons, links, pagination, containers, etc.?

This quick study can give you a better understanding of how you should be thinking about building your own portfolio. From here, choose the one you admire the most and follow their styling and level of technical details.

Here are some places to start looking for good portfolios:

2- Start small — Redesign a feature

I know that you’re excited! You want to brag about your creative product ideas on your website. But remember that you don’t need to have designed a novel product that solves a huge problem in the world to be considered a good designer. Therefore, there is no need to pick a complex topic, aim to design something from scratch, spend time and energy for months, get lost in the middle of the process, and give up!

Instead, take something small and put your energy and focus on the design process! It could be as simple as redesigning an app that everyone is familiar with (like Spotify, Pinterest, Instagram, Yelp, and Venmo to just to name a few.)

Your goal is to convince your users — the hiring managers– that you are a critical thinker that sees a gap, works to understand the problem, breaks it down to smaller soluble pieces, and then solves it. As long as you can showcase that you understand the design process well, it doesn’t matter how big of a “made-up product” you have designed.

When I was building my first ever UX portfolio, I redesigned a feature in Venmo as one of my projects. I thought that the user experience could improve by providing transparency about other users and their transaction history. I took that and followed every step of the design process — research, define the problem, design, test, and iterate. Surprisingly, that project received the most views on my website because people were familiar with Venmo and could easily resonate with the problem I was trying to solve.

3- Be diverse with highlighting your design skills

Unless you have a few good years of industry experience as a designer, there’s a good chance that you are still not very clear about what category of Design — Research, UX, UI, Visual, Interaction — fits you best. It is critical to highlight different skill sets in each of the projects that you have in your portfolio.

For example, in one project, focus more on the UX deliverable and the design process you took to uncover the real problem, research methods you have used, and how you have leveraged those findings in designing a better product. The second project focus on Interaction Design and prototyping skills. Think of what types of interactions does the user takes to get to the next step! Is it a scroll, swipe up, swipe left, etc. Create and share your interactive prototype in that project. And in the 3rd one, dig deeper into the UI design, how did you go with choosing the right UI components, color palette, and all of that fun stuff.

Inadditon, be diverse with the platforms you choose to design for. Having 3 e-commerce web-app is not as impressive as having one web app, one mobile app, and maybe even one project on Apple watch.

Take the risk and think out of the box. It is not about copy-pasting one project into multiple and changing images and titles only! Each of your projects should emphasize a different design skillset. Ask yourself about what are you trying to show off with each case study? And be clear about what exactly your portfolio should achieve.

4- Your portfolio is your product– treat it like one

Your portfolio is a product itself and hiring managers and recruiters are your users! You need to make sure that they can easily achieve their goal of evaluating you as a candidate and convincing them to give you the job.

They should be able to seamlessly navigate through your website, read the context, and understand what you’ve been up to. It is your job as an aspiring Product Designer to create such user experience.

5- Keep iterating

When I was making my first UX portfolio, I thought I should be sitting at my desk and keep pushing pixels for months until I magically come up with that perfect website. That is a very wrong approach, my friend. Design is a highly iterative process and a product — in this case, your website- grows over time and from the feedback you gather.

Bring your portfolio to people from different backgrounds and levels— not just designers – then see what they think. Can they understand what you have done in that project? Is it easy for them to find out how long did that project take or what it is about? What questions are they asking you? What else do they want to know that you didn’t provide already?

In addition to that, use your interviews as an opportunity to get feedback on your work. Observe how interviewers ask questions. Are they asking you questions because they couldn’t locate some information on your website? What part of your project is unclear to them and why? What parts are missing?

Use those feedback and keep iterating until you get a job!

You got this!

Job hunting is challenging and could be frustrating. Keep pushing and use every opportunity you have to learn and get better. Initially, you just need to get your feet to the door. Be open to different opportunities that can lead you to get your hands dirty with design work.

Also, If you need support and motivation, someone to review your resume, portfolio, etc. hit me up on LinkedIn, and let’s talk. I’d be happy to help. Remember that life is crazy but YOU WILL FIND YOUR WAY:)