Simple Things You Can Do to Improve Your UX Portfolio
I’ve had the opportunity to review thousands of UX portfolios and conduct hundreds of interviews with design candidates of all levels and backgrounds as Head of Design at O/M — a product design firm I founded in 2013 — and previously in my roles at Apple and Google. Over the years, I’ve built up an intuition to know within seconds whether a portfolio is aligned with the role we are hiring for.
And through this experience, I’ve identified six common mistakes that people make in their portfolios. Each mistake adds friction to the process and signals to a hiring manager that you might not be the right person for the role. The good news is, in most cases, these mistakes can be fixed quickly.
Consider your audience
As a job seeker, you are talking, first and foremost, to hiring managers and recruiters. It’s important that your message is tuned to your audience and that you consider their needs.
At large tech companies, larger startups, or agencies, your portfolio is usually first reviewed by a recruiter who then funnels select portfolios to hiring managers. If you’re applying to jobs at smaller startups, your portfolio might be reviewed by the founder or someone from another function who may or may not understand design. In other industries, where design is a newer discipline or where it’s been undervalued, the folks reviewing your portfolio might not know how to properly evaluate your skills.
Consider who you are talking to through your portfolio. Remember that they are busy and they likely have a stack of portfolios to get through, probably between back to back meetings or on their commute.
You won’t be able to speak to everyone equally without muddling your message. Instead, consider your goals and tune your message to the audience that will best help you achieve your goals. Then keep your audience in mind with every subsequent decision you make.
State your mission clearly
You only have a few seconds to earn and retain someone’s attention with your portfolio. Don’t make your audience guess what you do. A mission statement, clearly stated and prominently displayed, will help hiring managers understand who you are.
Your mission statement is a hiring manager’s first impression of you and your practice as a designer. It is the summary of what the work in your portfolio says about you, and it should provide viewers with the right context to absorb the rest of your story. A good mission statement has the power to engage viewers and entice them to learn more.
The first step to writing a clear mission statement is to ask yourself what your goals are. Are you a new grad looking to land your first design job? Do you have a couple years under your belt and you’re looking to level up in a new role? Are you making the jump from an in-house team to a design studio? Or switching careers into design?
Help your audience understand where you’re coming from so they can see the possibility of aligning your skills with their needs. Help them understand how you might be a good person to help them with their mission.
For example, if you are a new grad looking for your first design job, you could say something like: Passionate problem solver looking for my first design role. Or if you’re looking for your next role: Experienced designer looking for my next big challenge.
Showcase work that aligns with your mission
Once you have the right mission statement in place, the next step is to select the work you want to share in your portfolio. The work you select should be relevant to your audience, be aligned with your mission, and reflect the kind of work you want to do. Rare is the designer who can truly do it all at an expert level. Unless you are one of these rare designers, it’s important to align the work you share with your core mission.
There is a tendency, especially among designers newer to the field, to showcase all the projects in their portfolio. This is often done in an attempt to compensate for a potential lack of experience within the core area they are looking for in their next role. The result is a portfolio that is not aligned with the designer’s mission, thus diluting the message.
For example, a designer who just finishes a bootcamp and only has a couple group projects to share might want to include their illustration work or branding work as a peer to their UX work. While it’s great to have complementary skills, it’s important to contextualize that work as a value add in addition to your UX abilities.
As a reviewer, if I see a confusing mix of graphic design, illustration, branding, and UX, I assume the person is not specialized or focused enough in their work to be right for our team. At O/M, we hire T-shaped people, but we want to make sure UX is someone’s passion and core competency, first and foremost.
It can be tempting to include all the projects you love, so if you decide to include non-UX work in your UX portfolio, I’d suggest clearly delineating it from your UX work (for example, in a separate page). This will enable you to show off your broader skills, while keeping the focus on your mission.
Showcase the right work — less is more
It’s also important to pick the right number of projects to showcase. It can be tempting to include all of your UX work in your portfolio. In most cases, this is only a good idea if you have a lot of experience working over a decade or more. And even then, you run the risk of dating yourself or showing work that is out-moded.
You are only as good as the weakest piece or work in your portfolio. For those with less experience, it’s important that the work you show is of the highest quality. The more weak links you introduce, the more chances you have to send the wrong message about your abilities. Remember that good UX work takes time, and having a portfolio with many high quality projects as a new grad is unrealistic.
Showing fewer projects that are all high quality has the benefit of making your viewers’ job easier. Every design manager has their preferences, but for me the sweet spot is to show between three and five case studies. It’s enough to show a range of depth, a variety of problem solving, and a thorough understanding of the design process.
It’s also important that you choose case studies that tell a story that supports your mission. For example, you could have one case study that is heavy on research, another that shows off your process, and one that is focused on broad design explorations. The themes can vary depending on your experience and your goals, but they should back up your mission statement and give the viewer a solid understanding of what you’re capable of.
Design matters
Your portfolio is a user experience. It’s a tool that communicates your intentions and skills to hiring managers and recruiters. These people are busy, and they don’t have the time to figure out how to use your website, no matter how fun or novel it might be. This is not the time to reinvent the wheel. In most cases, clean, simple, well-structured design and storytelling wins the day.
Take the time to thoughtfully lay things out on a grid. Pay attention to the typography. Create an information hierarchy that is intuitive and consistent. Make sure your portfolio looks as good on mobile as it does on your laptop.
And then identify a few points in the experience where you can express some personality. Perhaps you can add some subtle motion design — a chance to show off a secondary skill — that aids in the interpretation and understanding of your message. Maybe you have a clever idea for a favicon?
These flourishes should never interfere with the broader story you’re telling. Instead, they should be in service of the viewer getting to know you better and they should never be misaligned with your mission statement. The possibilities are endless. Choose wisely.
Details matter
At O/M, we hire people who can hold both the big picture and important details in mind concurrently. Details matter to us. A lot.
Typos, misspelled words, low resolution images, broken links. These can be achilles heel of a portfolio, basic mistakes signal an inability to mind all the details. They show a lack of care and craft — two things that are critical to creating good user experiences.
The good news is, in most cases, these mistakes are easy to avoid. Have a trusted friend or mentor review your portfolio. Do a spell check. Use your computer’s screen reader to have the text read back to you to catch syntax and grammatical errors. Look at your portfolio on multiple devices as you’re designing it and as you prepare to publish it. Taking the extra time before you launch your portfolio to catch simple mistakes could be the difference between getting the right response and getting no responses at all.
Next steps
Designing and publishing a personal portfolio is one of the hardest projects designers undertake. The old clichés are true: every designer is unhappy with their portfolio, it’s always out of date, and always needs a redesign.
Don’t let this paralyze you. The worst thing you can do is tinker indefinitely. If you’re stuck, ask a peer or mentor to take a look. If you’re ready to go and want a final look from an expert, you could attend one the Portfolio Sessions we host at O/M. I hope to see you at a future session.
