UX IRL Ep. 15: UX Portfolio Case Studies
Hello! Here are our show notes for episode 15 of UX Portfolio Case Studies. We hit the highlights in this article, but get the full context by listening to the episode:
We devote a full episode to the ins and outs of case studies in your UX portfolio, answering questions like — Why have a portfolio? What should I put in them? How should I approach a case study? What are the dos and don’ts? We cover our approach, but love to hear yours in case we forgot anything. Comment below or reply on Twitter @uxinreallife or on Instagram @ux.inreallife.
Why have a UX portfolio?
A UX portfolio is a high-level way for other people to get to know you and how you work — your process, how you approach things, your experience. It’s also part of your brand and online presence. For example, Michelle uses it to demonstrate her expertise in design systems and DesignOps.
UX IRL Takeaway: UX portfolios are a must have for any UX practitioner.
What goes in a UX portfolio?
Typically your portfolio includes case studies, your resume, and a little about you. The bulk of your portfolio should be case studies.
Case studies dos and don’ts
- 👎 Don’t show just images of your work, like a dribbble site or a photography portfolio
- 👍 Do show your process, images from the different UX activities in addition to final UI images
- 👍 Do include your resume — ideally a digital one, but a link to a PDF works, too.
- 👍 Do include a little bit about yourself — hiring managers shouldn’t use this information for or against you, but it’s nice for people to see you’re human.
Michelle was a hiring manager for over three years and has looked at several portfolios.
Hiring managers have a lot of portfolios to look at on top of doing their regular work duties, so they’re not going to spend too much time on reviewing your portfolio. We recommend you:
- Show your process at a high level — this helps people get a sense of your approach.
- Practice conciseness — it helps hiring managers get the gist faster and you just want to get them interested enough to move you to the next round.
- Don’t go into so much detail — people don’t have time to read and if they do, they might make assumptions on your decisions. You can dive into details when presenting your case studies.
- Show your best work — hiring managers don’t want to sort through random pieces and will probably only look at 1–2 pieces.
- Keep things scannable — use headings, bullets, and mix content up with images.
- Don’t show things that are dated — our field changes so much and hiring managers will want to see that you’ve kept current.
Every hiring manager will have a different approach in reviewing portfolios. Regardless, everyone’s approach includes brevity.
Ideally you’d show end-to-end case studies. If you don’t have end-to-end case studies, there are other ways to present your work. You might be able to group smaller pieces into categories (e.g., complicated UX). Michelle didn’t want to share how she built a playbook, since that story isn’t that interesting. Instead, she has a section in her portfolio about operational efficiencies — that’s what the story is really about. As part of that she talks about playbooks being an aspect of operationalizing.
UX IRL Takeaway: Every hiring manager will have a different approach in reviewing portfolios. Regardless, everyone’s approach includes brevity. So make sure you concisely demonstrate your abilities and experience.
How should I write my case studies?
We recommend identifying or creating a framework that works for you. We each have different ways of approaching this. You might like one way more than another, like both, or find something else that meets your needs.
Mary Fran has a framework where she documents details of her projects as she works on them. She’s used Airtable in the past to track details like project name, client, problem to solve, etc. but also links to files, images, and so on. You can use any tool that helps you map and track your info like Miro, Mural, or Notion. She incrementally adds to her document with bullets around details and any other relevant info. This gives her all the info she needs when writing her case study.
Michelle uses a narrative story arc, which she’s learned from Donna Lichaw’s book The User’s Journey: Storymapping Products People Love.
With the narrative arc, she’ll frame out her case study and add bullet points for each phase. Depending on how she’s feeling, she might start to write it out as a narrative. She’ll also run her first draft through the Hemingway app to simplify her writing. UX can get technical and complicated, so she’ll continue to edit for conciseness and clarity.
UX IRL Takeaway: We recommend having a framework of some sort, which will make this repeatable process easier.
What should I include in my case study?
Beyond including the basics of your case study like the name of the project, the goal, and problem statement, there’s a few other things that are important to include.
We recommend doing a retrospective where you reflect on the project at the end. This is a great way to capture what worked well, what didn’t, and what you learned and will take forward. Hiring teams like to see what you learned from your experiences because it shows a growth mindset, analytical thinking, and a sense of humility.
It’s also realistic, we all know projects don’t always go as planned and hiring managers want to know how you deal when faced with challenges.
Collect artifacts as you work on your projects. It’s much better to collect too many things than run short of them. Michelle will take stylized photos of white board sketches or action shots of colleagues doing work. It’s almost like creating a library of your own stock photography. This isn’t just great for your portfolio, but also for any exec or stakeholder presentations. Michelle uses them to show that UX is an active process that’s more than just Figma files.
Taking stylized photos in a remote world
It was much easier to take engaging photos when we were all in person. For engaging photos in a remote world, Michelle recommends getting creative. For example, instead of just a screenshot of a Miro board, maybe have a friend or family member take a photo of you at your computer working in Miro or Figma. Michelle’s used Giphy Capture to record cursors moving in Miro to show engagement and collaboration from a workshop. You can even take screenshots of a video call as an example of collaboration. Or if artifacts aren’t tangible, like audio recordings, consider taking a screenshot of the audio file open.
What if you don’t have the artifacts?
Sometimes we don’t have them and that’s OK. You can try recreating them. For example, Michelle threw out cards from a card sorting exercise, so she recreated the index cards to add an image of it in her case study. This is fine as long as you’re not creating things that didn’t exist before. If you’re making stuff up, you will get found out. Hiring teams are smart!
UX IRL Takeaway: Be proactive when collecting artifacts. It’s always easier to cut out content than to recreate them.
Iterating, improving, and other sound advice
You hear us talk about iterating a lot. Iterating is important here, too. When making improvements or iterating on your case study, we recommend:
- Reading things out loud — this helps you get a sense of where things might be wordy.
- Having a friend or peer review your portfolio — ideally someone who knows the field. If you don’t have someone, consider a mentor or career coach that specializes in your discipline
- Taking a break and coming back to it — powering through it to get it over with is one thing, but this is a lot of work. So take breaks and come back with a clear mind. It’ll actually go much faster since you’ll be refreshed! Michelle will post her case study online in a finished enough state, but will come back a week later to review it and update it as needed.
- Using the Hemingway app or other writing checker to help with grammar and conciseness
A few other things to keep in mind:
- No project is ever done, so if you can, refresh your case studies with any updates. For example, the results from the usability test you mentioned you were going to do.
- Capture next steps for the project, even if you haven’t gotten to them yet, or if things changed. Hiring teams typically want to know what you did after or at the end.
- If you feel like you don’t have anything to show for your work or are embarrassed by it because you had to adjust your designs to meet constraints, that’s OK! Instead, you can include how you would have approached the designs ideally and you can talk about what happened. This is a great way to demonstrate your approach to negotiating, compromising, and collaborating
- Don’t throw out all the details you have! Even though your case study online will be concise, save the information and artifacts for your portfolio presentation. In those, interviewers will want to learn more of the details and sometimes they might even ask to see the design file, etc.
- Don’t spend too much time crafting the perfect UI. Pick a template that works best and showcases your work well. Even if you can code or know how to design a website, it’s a lot of effort. Focus your energy on crafting your case studies.
UX IRL Takeaway: Keep iterating on your portfolio. The more it becomes a habit, the easier it will be to update and the more you’ll be prepared for your next steps.
We’d love to hear from you!
If you have questions about portfolios or about anything else around UX in real life, please reach out to us! If you have topics you’d like to hear us cover let us know.
