Tips for UX Portfolio Design

In the past week, I've reviewed almost 400 applications for our Product Designer position at Heyo. Here's what stood out and helped candidates move to the interview phase: 1. Impressive Work: We’re looking for portfolio pieces that make us pause and think, "We want this in our portfolio." Your work should excite us and match the quality our clients expect. 2. Match Your Work to Our Quality: A tip I share with mentees is to screenshot a company’s portfolio and replace a few of their graphics with your work. Does it match their quality? If your work is within a 25% range of our current projects, I’m interested and see growth potential. If it’s better, heck yes, now I’m excited to see if you can raise our bar. 3. Show End Results First: Start with the final product. I appreciate detailed case studies, but show the goods up front. Make me want to scroll through the rest of your work, not feel obligated. 4. Prune Your Portfolio: Remove weaker projects to raise the "average score" we may rate your portfolio. Ask friends for honest feedback. A streamlined portfolio of strong work can transform your presentation. 5. Show the Work Clearly: Ensure your portfolio has relevant preview images. If I don't see exciting work immediately (or the image doesn't pertain to your project), I might not click through to the case study. 6. Optimize Your Site: Slow sites with heavy animations are frustrating. Make sure your portfolio loads quickly and is easy to navigate. 7. Understand the Role: Tailor your application to the type of business and role. For agencies like ours, a balanced UI/UX skillset is crucial due to quick project turnarounds. In full transparency, I've reviewed a lot of UX heavy applicants that are missing the UI skillset as well. Additional Advice: Follow Application Instructions: Apply through the job posting. Direct messages with your portfolio and CV can get lost in the shuffle. Don’t Request Calls Without Context: I’m balancing my regular workload and reviewing applications. If you want to chat, send your work first. This isn't going to skip you to an interview. Timing for Networking: I’m open to talking shop and discussing design, but during hiring seasons, it’s best to connect after things calm down. If you're interested in the Product Designer, Motion Designer, or upcoming Developer roles we'll be posting this week, you can apply at https://heyo.is/growing and subscribe to be alerted for future opportunities with us. #Design #JobSearch #Hiring #CareerAdvice #ProductDesign #PortfolioTips #ProductDesigner

🤔 Design portfolio pro-tip: Level up your user flow communication through showing your decision tree. While showcasing basic user flows is a good start, hiring managers often go beyond that. In a sea of portfolios, distinguish yourself by demonstrating: 1. Deep user understanding: Embed user insights and pain points within your flow charts. 2. Creative problem-solving: Highlight how your user flows tackle specific challenges and optimize the user journey. 3. Impactful storytelling: Weave a narrative through your flows, showcasing how they influenced design decisions and drove positive outcomes. Remember, hiring managers want to see evidence of your design thinking and strategic impact, not just technical proficiency at creating a user flow chart. Instead, show your thought process: 1. What are the different types of flows you considered? 2. How did you make a decision on the end result? 3. What research, log data, audits or user feedback did you consider to make your final decision? For example, in this diagram below, my decision process could look something like this: DECISION Reason 1: Reduced onboarding steps by 3 screens Reason 2: Reduced onboarding abandonment by 30% Reason 3: Allow users to skip part of the onboarding flow and return later, increasing signups by x% Let me know if you have any questions! #design #portfolio #portfolioshowcase #uxcommunity #uxdesign #uxdesigner

Each UX/Product design case study in your portfolio needs these 2 things: 1️⃣ A top overview/impact section This is a 30-second read that provides the summary of the project and the impact you had. It also includes the final mockups and/or prototype. This makes it easy for hiring managers to quickly understand what you did, the quality of your work, and the impact it had for the company you were working for. 2️⃣ The short story of what you accomplished Right after the overview, dive into the story of what happened during the case study. Use a story arc to get there: - Context/background - Conflict - Rising action - Climax - Falling action - Resolution Use the headlines to drive the story. People don't read the smaller text, so make sure your story can be skimmed by just reading the headlines. By the end of just reading the headlines, the hiring manager should have an idea of what you did/accomplished. Make sure to break up the story with images of what you were working on and/or illustrations for the story. The resolution really matters within this section. This is where you bring up the impact you had on the project/company. What came about as a result of your work? For example, there are objective metrics that can show your impact like:  - Increased conversions - Increased successful task completion - Decreased failure rate - Increased error-free rate - Decreased time on task And there are subjective measures like asking participants: - How difficult each task was - Their level of satisfaction with each task - Their overall satisfaction   This section is always the hardest for aspiring UX/product designers because they're working on conceptual projects. We recommend our students use the objective metrics of usability testing such as successful task completion, error-free rate, decreased time on task, etc. This can show that you truly moved the needle on a feature because you can compare the before and after numbers. This, of course, isn't possible if you're creating a new feature from scratch. Instead, this is where you lean on your usability testing and what users said. You can still talk about task completion, error-free rate, time on task, etc., you just can't compare them to anything because there isn't a product to compare them to. There's one last thing you can talk about within the resolution section... You can also talk about how you're a different person than when you began. What did you learn as a result of this project? How are you a changed person? After all, you are telling a story and both you AND the product you were working on are the heroes of the story. #UX #ProductDesign #UXPortfolio

Don’t make the UX projects in your portfolio a checklist Instead, be selective in what you share. Here’s how. Avoid this: ✔ Empathize ✔ Define ✔ Ideate ✔ Prototype  ✔ Test Instead, make your portfolio a collection of stories. Let each story share a specific skillset/experience that’s relevant to your next position. - One project may highlight how user feedback affected every design iteration. - In another project, you may emphasize your ability to plan and implement usability tests to guarantee a high customer satisfaction rating. - In a different project, you may emphasize your research skills and how you performed competitor analysis to develop a product that fills a gap in the market. Get specific. Narrow down how much you share so you can get specific enough to share the why and the how. What are other ways to make a UX portfolio stand out? #uxdesign #designportfolio #uxportfolio #jobsearch #careerjourney

New Year, New Portfolio Tips This week, I spent a significant amount of time reviewing portfolios with talent—one of my favorite activities. Having examined hundreds over the past three years, I've gained a good understanding of what clients seek, irrespective of job title or industry. First and foremost, a hiring manager is unlikely to spend more than a minute or two reviewing your portfolio. If your work isn't easy to navigate and your top projects aren't immediately visible, you're doing yourself a disservice. The best portfolios feature key projects on the first page, allowing viewers to quickly grasp the person's contributions by reading a brief snippet at the top and viewing images, wireframes, or other relevant content below. In the UX/UI world, showcasing your entire process from end to end is crucial. Most importantly, remember that less is more. It's better to have 4-6 standout projects than 12 lacking detail. Hiring managers typically focus on the first few projects to understand your experience and design thinking, making decisions on the next steps from there. If you're seeking a new role in 2024, invest time in refining your portfolio with this thought in mind: If someone has one minute to review my portfolio, will they understand my work experience and design thinking process, enabling them to decide if I align with the job they are hiring for?

Creating a portfolio is notoriously a pain. 😄 Designers already have so much on their plate and on top of that we have to track all of our work and regularly update our portfolios so that it represents our abilities accurately. The more your focused on having a real impact at work, the less focus you put on documenting and updating your work. Let’s be real designers are busy. We’re in meetings and we’re executing on IC work. So here are 3 tips to make it easy for you: 1. Document everything like a mad person. Have really good Project kickoff documents, design docs, comments, and even annotate in Figma on why you made certain decisions. This way when you “forget” to closely document your process for your portfolio, it’s already a part of your workflow that you can go back to with minimal effort. 2. Start with an outline that tells the story of your case study. Give us the background (high level), see my previous post on not oversharing. 😉 Tell us about the challenges that you faced and bring us to the climax, how did you overcome that challenge and ultimately close out the project. Think of a pixar movie plot. You can achieve breadth and depth. 3. Make it skimmable and easy to navigate. 🎯 This means show images, brainstorming in Figjam, user flows, sketches, high fidelity work, gifs, etc. This along with clear, descriptive headlines helps people scan your portfolio and get a quick understanding of whether or not they want to read deeper into it. If you need help creating your portfolio, The Craft has a resource written by me, I’ll link it below. Drop any questions for me in the comments.

Treat your UX portfolio as a sales tool, not a museum. Many designers view their portfolio as a collection and repository of all their career work and design projects. The problem with this approach is it overwhelms hiring teams. When you show everything, the narrative gets lost, and it puts the effort on the hiring team to identify the most impactful or relevant work. And when a hiring team has a queue of 500+ portfolios to review, they don't have time to view 5+ case studies per candidate (that would be 2,500 case studies). Furthermore, when you share all of your work, it means you're showing your worst or least relevant work. This is why I no longer think of my portfolio as an exhaustive collection of my career history. Rather, I see it as a marketing site and sales tool. My goal is to drive a compelling narrative with a call to action. Ultimately it's up to you to as a designer to decide what you will show and how much you show. Be strategic. Be intentional. Drive a compelling narrative. Think of it as a sales pitch instead of a museum... because unlike a museum where visitors spend hours, your portfolio may only have 30-60 seconds to make a strong first impression. --- What are your thoughts? How do you decide what to show in your portfolio? #ux #design #portfolio #casestudies #designer

What UX Designers think they need to create a compelling portfolio: – Lots of effects – “Innovative” navigation – All the details in their case studies – A list of every project they’ve ever done – Fluffy language about their passion for delivering intuitive experiences What they actually need for a portfolio that lands them the job: – Solid visual design – Precise copywriting – Bulletproof usability – Strategic positioning – Tasteful motion & other effects  – Curated work that builds authority – Scannable case studies that are easily consumed, regardless of length Remember, your portfolio is more than a collection of your work. It’s a document that makes you stand out from the crowd. And, proves you’re the right person for a specific job.