Think portfolio: My design career mistake
A few months ago, I was reflecting on my rich journey as a young conversational designer to update my LinkedIn profile. And my next projects won’t be the same anymore.

Every day I see a lot of awesome profiles that work on the very best projects and seem impossible if you want to replicate the type of design they ship.
You know, Dribbble designers with highly polished, butter-smooth motion designs.
At this point, you will ask yourself, based on your very own experience, if those designers have stakeholders, usability standards, or even co-workers that can break witty UIs during a design critique.
Same with UX study cases, I feel like nothing when I read those. They respected the process like nothing. Every step is here. The project arc is mostly a straight-success path — roadblocks seem anecdotic compared to the craftsmanship behind the study case.
Where’s the chaos? The shortcuts? The ego of stakeholders? The DIYness?
Plus, having to tell a project story downstream is painful: lack of research, crappy wireframes, hazardous design decisions.
Or maybe If I think portfolio upstream, it can become portfolio-worthy? And leads to overall better projects?
Yes, and yes.
Follow along, and you will have nothing to envy to those portfolio killers.
The importance to think portfolio
First, think track record.
When your hunting your next opportunity, having a portfolio full of well-detailed study cases is a plus.
When I interview someone for, I want to feel in his boot when I check his/her portfolio. Extra points if the design challenge is involved, or if roadblocks are numerous. It signals gold to my eyes since, in my experience, those are the more formative.
Exploring in the wild is more interesting than riding the highway. Tell us what happened in the chaos.
Documenting is a great way to connect the dots also. You will be able to put the light on the small things, which generated a more significant outcome when you take a step back.
Second, by adding a study case at the end of your design process, you’ll be likely to trust the soup and follow the process. You’ll add the documenting part to your routine, and everybody will follow along.
Every roadblock becomes exciting twists in the story you will tell, every budget constraints become an opportunity to show your resilience and imagination.
You won’t miss a design critique; you’ll do the extra mile to show your work in a cool mockup because it will make sense into your study case and add a lot of value to the outcomes.
Lastly, I’ve found that having in mind that I will have to tell the story of what I’m currently doing helped me to detect low signals and possible drift from our primary mission, basically the ability to “zoom-out.”
A story, like a product, can (and likely will) have twists and take different directions. But they need to be coherent.
If it’s not coherent for your story, how it could be for the people who you are designing for?
How to think portfolio
Ok, Ulysse, but how?
At the start of a new project, it can be an iteration of a new feature, or even a new client if you’re freelancing, prepare a framework, the plan of your final study case.
Design it to be suitable for possible pivots, twists.
My favorite starter plan is :
- My role
- The Challenge
- The context
- Interesting things (process, research insights, learnings, tools)
- Key achievements
Start to complete it during the kick-off. And tell your stakeholder that you’ll document the project, and the study case is part of the final deliverable.
Then, add the documentation part into your routine. Consider it design journaling.
Plan a moment in your daily routine to reflect on the progress of the project, and try to write down not only your design action but also decisions, anecdotes.
If you’re presenting something, go the extra mile to make it portfolio worthy.
At the end of the project, invest some time to put together all your notes and mockups, in whatever form: a presentation deck, a blog post, a well-designed web page even an Instagram carousel.
And present it to your team, stakeholders. There’s a lot of value into your extra-work for every person involved in the process. If the project is finally aborted, it will even be more critical. Don’t neglect it.
Often I listen to designers blaming the lack of recognition from stakeholders. But what can we do every day to help them to value our work? Do we even try to speak their language?
Adding documentation to your design process and a study case to your deliverables, you will put the light on the trickiness of the challenge, the project constraints, and the impact of your design. Which will speak to everyone? Numbers don’t lie.
Are you the only designer at work? Perfect consider it like a manager that will reflect your work and points out what worked well and on what you have to get better or adapt.
It was my case, and I can see the benefit on my own and the influence it can have on the product I’m designing.
So, convinced?

