UX Portfolio Review Takeaways #1 — ADPList Coffee Hours
Tips from Mel Sweet and Jill Quek
What is the Amazing Design People List (ADPList)?
ADPList, a.ka, the Amazing Design People list, is a global community, led by designers and James Badur to help designers and the design community as a whole find each other. The ADP community revolves around designers, where the aim is to help budding designers find the right kind of mentorship, to help hone their skills, from renowned practitioners in the field, and land the kind of jobs they are looking for. At the same time, they help the startup community find the right talent they are looking for immediately. It is a wholesome community, filled with love and respect for designers coming from any part of the world.
ADP conducts regular events starring the mentors of the community, who provide expert portfolio reviews, career advice, interview hacks and more for anyone looking for it. You should definitely check them out if you are looking to get valuable opinions on your portfolio or any other career advice. https://www.adplist.org/
Portfolio Review Excerpt Edition 2:
In this article we are going to cover the crucial pointers shared by experts, Product Designer at Dropbox and Senior Product Designer at Automattic in the 2nd edition of the portfolio review session conducted by ADPlist Coffee Hours.
Procedure Followed:
- Design participants can shoot in their portfolio links in the chatbox, which will have a chance to get reviewed.
- The experts then choose portfolios at random and review them for about 5–10 minutes each.
- Both mentors share their thoughts on the chosen portfolio. They share what they liked, would have liked better, industry practices that are followed when it comes to reviewing etc.
- The session closes with a Q&A, where any participant can ask questions related to the expertise the mentors offer.
5 Key Pointers from this session:
We have summarised the learnings from the hour-long session into 5 short & actionable points below. Feeling too lazy to read? You can skip to the Key Takeaways section for the concise actionable points. With that done, let’s dive in.
1) First impression matters
“Recruiters get excited to see portfolios which makes an immediate positive impression”
All the portfolios that were picked got an immediate first reaction which set the tone for the review and created a quick personality vibe of the designer.
Sophia Hunag’s portfolio was the first to be chosen, and her portfolio was made in a cloud-based word editing tool, which immediately grabbed the attention of the mentors since they were so used to seeing websites made in Squarespace, Shopify etc. Jill even mentioned that she is platform agnostic, which gives some encouragement to us for working on any platform we like.
Lili had used her picture with a small description as the header banner and that made them instantly like her and Ariane’s portfolio header had a statement “Design with a purpose”, which sets her design intentions straight.
2) Quality over quantity
“Show restraint by showcasing only your star projects (2–3), this represents applicants confidence over their skill-sets & value”
As they move from the header, down the page, the project section comes up.
Seeing only a handful of projects as opposed to bombarding the page with all your projects pleases the recruiter.
The topmost project is what most people would explore first since it gives the impression that the designer wants to be noticed first.
Most of the participants had only 3–4 projects showing up, any other work was hidden under some tab, which was pointed out as a smart move.
3) Things to highlight
Mel says that portfolios are tools that help you get into the door of the company you want to work for. So, recruiters would like to see things like:
- Project Context
- Your role in the project — a story of your collaborations with other teams, not just terms like UX researcher.
- Adding a timeline of the project shows you know how to work with deadlines
- Adding a link to the live product at the start is a great way to let readers know you have finished what you started
- Ending the project with learning and future steps gives something to talk about in interviews
- Adding a metric and explaining how you achieved it through the project is another great way to grab attention.
- Before even glancing at your content, they look for these key elements
4) Adding your personality
Both Mel and Jill loved seeing sparks of the designer's personality seeping from the portfolio
Even the tiniest of details like creating brand initials for yourselves, the kind of animations you use for page changes, use of rounded edges or sharp will be an indicator of who you are to the recruiter
Taking it a step further, adding personal information like your hobbies, the activities you do outside of work, other areas of interest will help them connect with you
5) Going the extra mile
Additional touches that boost your portfolio
- A section of recommendations from your previous employers brings a lot of credibility to your portfolio work and shows you know how to sell yourself
- Adding movement to your work, and website in general piques curiosity
- A link to your resume on the home page — rather than a section of all your experience
- Keeping users in mind while building your websites — making navigation -simpler, highlighting key points, using sensible headers makes for a great portfolio
These are the 5 elements that Mel Sweet and Jill Quek emphasized on while going through all the 5 portfolios.
“Compare your projects to tools in the toolbox. Pick out only those tools which are necessary in solving the problems of your project, that is the mark of someone who is experienced in their role”
-Mel Sweet
The experts also mentioned a few tips on what to avoid in a portfolio:
- Using a small font size. Jill advocated for at least 14–16 points to ensure readability and accessibility
- Ignoring the mobile view of your website. Since most of these recruiters are quite busy, they might even look at your portfolio while on the go, on their mobiles. Optimizing that would be the smart choice
- Do not use screenshots in the projects that are way too small to read. Make sure they are zoomable, clickable and expandable
- Do not bombard your project page with all the work you have done so far. Hero only the important projects
- Avoid inserting too much detail to your projects. Topics of interest, challenges, and some special areas alone will give the recruiters an idea about your work.
Special Note in NDA signed projects:
Quite a few times, the topic of NDA’s came up and both the mentors assured that it is best to include information that falls outside the NDA bracket and talk about the rest in the in-person meeting. Recruiters will definitely understand the significance of an NDA.
Key Takeaways
This session By Jill Quek and Mel Sweet was highly informative and helpful in understanding what are the do’s and don’ts in a portfolio. They each brought their professional expertise in judging the designer’s work and were humble enough to say “ Take it as you will, This is just our opinion”. The session ends with a cute virtual selfie.
Originally published at https://thrilla.design on August 20, 2020.
