How to build a UX design portfolio that stands out
As I sit down to write this on a calm Saturday morning, I’m filled with a sense of calm I’ve not felt in a few years — a sense of finally landing a job I’m truly happy about. I joined Roku last month as a Senior Product Designer, I’m truly impressed by the unique culture and amazing people. This article focuses on the first portion of the journey — the grind and the prep.
Overview:
In this article I want to share what I have learnt over the years about building a compelling design portfolio. Designers love their portfolio, but the process of creating one, can be daunting even if you have done it over and over again.
The article focuses on what companies look for in portfolios, how to identify your audience, which products to choose for your portfolio and how to highlight your design process.
However, the most important thing I want you to take away from this is — your portfolio is about YOU, the person! This means that there’s no perfect portfolio, as there’s no perfect person.
It also means that your portfolio WILL not sing to every company or every opportunity out there. And that’s ok!
Your goal is to find the right role for YOU! So whether it’s multiple offers or rejects — it truly does not matter, as there’s just 1 right job for you and this is the pursuit to find it. Keep looking…. Don’t settle!!!
There’s a starter and a main-course
No, we are not talking about restaurant menus here. Still on the matter of portfolios, this is a good metaphor to think about when structuring content for your portfolio.
So what’s a starter — It’s a bite-sized chunk bite, that kindles your appetite. Just like that, I recommend building a “lite” version of your portfolio. This lite version is tailored to be shareable with recruiters and design managers, to give them a “glanceable view” of your work, to see if there’s interest in chatting further.
Starters are easy to make — when you walk into a restaurant hungry, starters arrive minutes after taking your seat. Similarly, your “lite-portfolio” should be quick to whip up — typically within a few hours. Great opportunities are hard to come by and your lite version should enable you to get in-front of these quickly.
Also, lite portfolios can be generic. This can be a huge time-saver as it helps you have the initial first conversations of mutual interest. You can then use that context to whip up role-specific detailed versions. More on this below….
In summary, starter/lite portfolios are awesome first artifacts to work on while building your design portfolio. They are time-saving, get you in the job-search zone, are easy to build and great conversation starters to learn more about a specific role/fit.
You have one chance to impress
To be more specific, think 30 seconds. Design recruiters and hiring managers are busy and they review 10s of 100s of portfolios every day. This means they know exactly what they are looking for.
To get the most bang for the buck, consider focusing your attention on the first few slides of your deck or above the fold content of your website.
If you are interested in reading my thoughts on web vs deck portfolios I’m planning to write a piece about this so stay tuned…
Here’s are some things useful to highlight:
- What’s your UX specialty — this usually means titles you have held in the past or aspire to in the future, like visual designer at xyz, aspiring product designer, motion designer etc.
- Past experience — which employers have you worked for and overall years of experience
- Flagship projects, key achievements and notable accomplishments- founding designer at a startup, worked on Facebook messenger thinking about designs at scale, specialize in accessibility etc…
- And because designers are visual creatures make sure you include high fidelity mocks of designs that you are proud of. This is the part of your portfolio to be creative about your designs. Put up hero images or dramatic perspective mocks. Think of this of the little window that prompts people to look further.
A case for your case studies:
When it comes to case studies it is important to understand the why, what and how?
Why:
Why are case studies important? Why do interviewers look at them?
Case studies enable you to showcase your process — They help you to highlight how you think about design alternatives, how you balanced business goals with design goals, how you evolved your designs with data and what you wish you had done differently. These are insights that are tough to glean from looking at beautiful final mocks. Think of your design case study as the time to lift the veil, and show how the magic happens.
What:
What are important aspects to highlight in your portfolio?
- What do you wish interviewers perceive as your unique strength?
- What line of work do you want to do in your next role? — Do you like early concept explorations? Are you excited about projects where there’s incremental improvements at scale? How important is A/B testing to your design process?
- Pick projects that showcase these high level objectives. Sometimes your work doesn’t really line up to what you want to do — For e.g: You might be a designer at a startup that wants to work on projects at scale. Adding examples of how your current designs would scale/what kind of design considerations you would be thinking about at scale can be powerful to illustrate your interest/capability to execute.
- What were learnings from your previous projects that made you the designer you are today?
How:
How do you go about presenting your case studies — How to pick and which aspects to highlight
Picking the right set of projects to showcase for your case studies is critical.With more and more companies moving to the “Product Designer” title, ideally you want projects that can showcase your strengths as a full-stack designer in — product thinking and strategy, interaction design visual design and UX writing.
- Your lite portfolio can showcase 4–6 projects. However the ideal number for a detailed case study is 2–3. Why? Detailed portfolio presentations typically happen between 45–60 mins and with 3 projects it comes to 15–20 mins/ project. This allows you to go into details of your design enough to capture interest for further questions and show variety.
- In each project go deep on a specific area instead of going broad. Focus on design details in interaction, visual or product experience. This involves stating the problem statement/goals clearly, showcasing alternative design executions, talking about trade-offs across different options and diving deep into outcomes, primarily those driven by design. In my own portfolio I picked 1 project to talk about product strategy/thinking and here all I showcased was final mocks. The 2 other projects focused on full-stack design and execution.
- The last piece of every case study must be — what would have done differently? This shows intentionality. Brownie points if you talk about your specific shortcomings because it shows the lack of ego and the willingness to be vulnerable to learn and grow
Here’s the template I used to structure my case studies.
- Problem statement
- Research — Data supporting the problem and dimensions of the problem
- Intro to the solution
- Design tenets/principles
- Wireframes — focus on interaction design alternatives/tradeoffs
- High fidelity designs — Version iterations based on data/testing
- Press or media coverage
- Key business outcomes
- Learnings for the future
Wrapping up:
Portfolios are truly game changers when it comes to job search and interviewing. I know several great designers who haven’t told compelling stories with their portfolios, and lost on really cool opportunities (myself included). Great products are built through relentless iteration and feedback — and the same is the case for great portfolios.
I hope this article serves as a source of inspiration to get there!
Hey there! I’m Sindhu — A senior product designer at Roku. Previously I built my own startup and worked at a startup studio called PSL. Oh also, I worked at Amazon building Amazon Key :) I love building new products and ideas.
Want to discuss startups and design? I’m all ears! Email me at sindu.ux@gmail.com. I can’t wait to hear all your stories :)
