EP 05 - How To Make UX Design Portfolio 2022 | Roadmap to UX Design

UX portfolio. You might be skilled and talented enough to work as a UX designer in Google, Facebook, Microsoft, or any multinational company, but that is only possible if you have a way through which you can convince your knowledge, work set, and experience, which will eventually help the recruiter decide whether they would hire you or not. And that is why, my friend, UX portfolio is one of the most crucial and important step to crack the design jobs of yours. And how do we do that? Let's get started. Hey everyone, Anirudh here.

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This is Roadmap to User Experience Design, episode number 5, and today in this episode we're gonna talk about UX portfolios. So to get started with that, let's answer the very basic question of what is UX portfolio. UX portfolios are basically collection of all your work, all your projects, all your problems and case studies that you have done as a UX designer, UI designer, UX researcher, or just as a beginner who want to kickstart their UX UX portfolios are just like your best friends who will speak on your behalf, take your back when you're not able to stand for your own self. And what does that really mean? Let's just try to understand this with an example. If there's an opening on Google for an UX designer, what is the best can you do? You can't definitely call the HR and say, hey, I am a great UX designer, that's a pinky promise, please hire me. No, you can't definitely do that. But the best that you can do is just apply for the job, leave your resume and portfolio for the recruiter to see and get back to you. That's why your portfolio is just like like your best friend, and your portfolio will depict and talk for yourself and explain all your good qualities and your work ethics to the HR and the hiring managers. How to make a UX portfolio? Let's just bifurcate this question into two important buckets. First one, you are either someone who is getting started with your UX career from an online course or pursuing some design degree. Second one, you're someone who already has a work experience, maybe either by internship, freelancing work, or you're actually working in a startup or a well-established organization. In each of the cases, the flow and the scenario portfolio is very different. So let's get started with the very first one where you don't have any experience. So let's say you don't have any work experience. So the question over here is not how do I make my portfolio, but the question is what do I make my portfolio all about? Because you don't have any work experience, you don't have any projects that you have done. Well, to solve that issue, let's just try to understand that there has to be a single important problem statement that you can solve via XYZ process and then make a case study out of it and then put it in your portfolio to showcase all the other hiring managers or your friends. And how do we actually do that? To get the problem statement, you can reach out to a mentor or someone who is well experienced. They can share your problem statement which you can work on to it, or you can go on some online UX challenges website. You can pick up some challenge which you want to solve. Or secondly, you're already using a lot of online website products or application which you think there are some issues in that product. You might want to pick up that and try to solve that. But in either of the cases, the important thing that you need to understand is that picking A problem statement just because you think it's a problem or someone has already given you will not make sense to the hiring managers. You will have to make sure to follow the very first important step of validating that problem statement. You will have to go ahead and talk to few users or target audience and talk to them whether are they also facing this problem statement or not, and just note down and jot down everything into a document, maybe a UX documentation. That will be a supporting principle that why did I select this problem statement to solve, make a case study out of it, and put in my portfolio. Making a UX portfolio, if you already have some work experience and you have worked on multiple projects, is going to be simple because you can use the same problem statement and same project that you have done, make it a case study out of it, and then put it in your portfolio. But the important point to focus over here is that please make sure to select the projects or problem statement that you have maximum ownership of. Do not select a project which is done as a group activity with other colleagues where you have a smaller contribution of 5 to 10% because that is not going to help me understand how are you as a designer. So make sure to share the project in your portfolio which has maximum ownership by your own self. What is the structure of a good UX portfolio? Well, let us assume that you're already a UX designer or a product designer, and some way or the other you are solving problems and making digital solution that will eventually solve some larger problems of the end users. Similarly, you have to make sure that while you're designing or constructing your portfolio, you have to keep the end user in your mind, which is going to be the HR or the hiring manager. That's why to have a very structured portfolio is very important in order to make sure that the complete portfolio is simple and easy to understand. Along with that, there are few more important steps that you need to consider. Let's just see what are those. Step number 1 of a good structured UX portfolio is always start with you. You as in who are you, what do you do, what are you good at, what are your skills. Talk about yourself. Maybe give a slide, 1 or 2, where you can depict the complete first 2-fold for yourself. Over here you can also add all the social activities or things that you do or workshop that you take or any training or corporate training that you are into, or some way or the other you're helping other person, or something that you're pursuing apart from your design career. Because that is what is the unique part about you, and that will differentiate you from rest of the other portfolios and people. So definitely add that. Point number 2, experiences. Now you would say that, hey, there's a resume for that, Anirudh. Why do I have to add my experience in my portfolio? Isn't it about the work that I've done? Well, The portfolio is not about the work that you have done. The portfolio is about you. As a designer, you should have a single source of truth which will talk about everything about yourself, your work experience, your projects, and everything that you're good at, your contact details, everything. So that's why it is very important to add up the work experiences in your portfolio. It does not have to be in a very casual format just like your resume. It can simply be statistic, like worked for 5 companies in 2 years, completed more than 7 projects in 5 years, have completed 3 courses in 2 months, have been nominated for XYZ awards in next 2 years, and anything and everything that you can add up as your work experience, just add it over here in some statistics format. Step number 3, or element number 3, which is case study. Now, case study should consume 80, 85, or 90% of your complete portfolio, because about yourself and your experience will define who you are, but your portfolio and your work will actually define the professionalism and the skills that you own as a UX designer. So make sure that every case study that you do should have a complete explanation about how you actually solve the problem statement, right from the problem statement to the final conclusion or the final solution. You need to have to explain everything step by step. Your case study should follow outcome-based approach. Example: I was hungry, so I ate food. Now I am not hungry anymore. I was tired, so I took some rest. Now I am fresh and energetic. I wanted to understand some problem statement, so I wrote stakeholders questionnaire. I wanted to understand the market, so I did a quick research. So on and so forth. That is the beauty of an outcome-based approach, because here you don't have to explain everything. It need not have to be a long story, okay? You can definitely cut it out to say that, okay, I faced this issue and this is how I've solved it. Maybe I did this step to come up with that solution. Next thing, Stating roadblocks and how did you overcome has its own brownie point. You were stuck somewhere, you did not have any other help, but this is the approach that you used to come out of it will definitely help you. Next step, make the complete study or your case study scannable. Don't overuse text. Use proper headings and segregation between sections. It need not have to be very cluttered where I'll have to read each and every step. I'm just going to scan your portfolio to decide whether I'm going to take you for next round or not. So don't write the complete story, but explain the story in a very less cluttered format. Once you are done with your case study, make sure to give a small walkthrough to your close friend or your mentor and get some tips on improving it before giving directly to the hiring manager. You can't make a perfect portfolio in the very first attempt, you know. You need to make sure that you go ahead and validate this also. So as a UX designer, what do we do? We make solution, we validate the solution, and reiterate and optimize the solution unless and until we are sure that this is something that I wanted to achieve. So go ahead and validate that solution or your portfolio with some colleagues and your mentor. Last point should be your contact details and important links. Well, you might be omnipresent everywhere. It's okay, you can add that in your contact details, your basic details as your phone number, your email ID. Your address is not that important, just writing a country name or a city name is more than important. But yes, if you are writing articles Medium and Quora, if you're making videos on YouTube and Instagram, and you're putting up Reels somewhere which can be fun-loving or something that explains about your personality, you can definitely add links over there. So that was all about the main important structure of a good UX portfolio. I know the list was very big, and to be very honest, I have clubbed down and narrowed down to a very best possible steps to have as a good UX structure. How many projects or case study is required in a good portfolio? Well, it's a very simple question and let's just stick to a simple answer. Not more than 3. It can be either best 3 projects that you have already done in your career or recent 3 projects that you can showcase to an HR manager. Because 3 projects is more than enough for you to communicate and share all your skills and workflow and your thought process with the hiring manager. So 3 projects and 3 case studies is more than enough. The reason for 3 projects is that you get only 1 hour as your portfolio screening round and you will have 2 give a walkthrough to your complete portfolio to the hiring manager. And 1 hour is more than enough to explain 1 project or 2 projects depending on how depth of the project you want to explain or what is the requirement that the hiring manager wants you to explain. He or she may directly skip from a project 1 to project 3 or project 1 to project 2. So that's why for a safer side, 3 projects is more than enough. But 90% of the time, the complete portfolio screening is done within for 2 projects. Important tips about a good portfolio. Well, make sure that you don't submit the same portfolio to all the companies that you apply for. Make sure to rearrange your projects in such a way that your problem statement comes closest to the problem statement of the company that you're trying to apply. It can be a food tech company, a tech company. If you don't have that project, it's okay, but if you do have, make sure that you rearrange in that way. Tip number 2: Do not share a PDF portfolio. Make sure to share a digital shareable link of your portfolio because PDFs are huge in size and it consumes good amount of time to download the PDF because 90% of the time the web browser would not show preview of your portfolio because it's huge in size. So make sure to share the link. Some good example of sharing a link can be Medium, can be Behance, can be Dribbble. You can use free hosting websites links where you can make a free website for yourself. You can also go to no-code websites like Webflow, Flow and make a website for yourself. But a big no to PDF websites. Please don't send your portfolio in PDF format. Tip number 3: Make sure to have your portfolio designed in such a way that is as clean as possible and easy to scan and navigate through, so that the person who is going through your portfolio would spend little amount of time and get the maximum benefit out of it and understand you as a UX designer. You can definitely use, use headings and visual segregation to differentiate from one section to another. Someone is going through your portfolio to hire you, right? Please don't make it a difficult task for them to understand your portfolio and your projects. Tip number 4: Make sure that you know everything that you have put up in your portfolio and have a logical reasoning behind everything, because it may so happen that the hiring manager would pick up any single point and ask you question based on that point or a section, and not giving a right answer to that, that would be very suspicious and would not give you a positive points around that. So make sure to have a clear idea, vision, and reasoning behind everything that you put in your portfolio.

Well, let's go ahead and try to identify or understand what are the actual portfolios are there in online. So if you remember the very first point where we talked about a huge heading and introduction, or your portfolio should start with yourself, if you can definitely go back and search for some product designer or UX designer, interaction designer. So here's something, Pratibha, who works as a product designer in Google, she has a good introduction about herself. Going forward, there's another UX designer, Christina, she has an introduction about herself. So we can definitely conclude the fact that it's always better and a good idea to start your portfolio talking about yourself, a brief introduction or so. And the second part of the portfolio, which is the case study, let's just try to understand few case studies. For references. So I've already been to this website called UXfolio to, you know, have an early ideation stage in my starting career. So there was this portfolio which is a case study by Mahshad Safi who has already explained the case study in a very detailed manner. So I would be using this case study for our references and I have definitely went to LinkedIn and pinged her saying that, hey, I liked your portfolio, can I use it as a reference in my video? I would definitely give credits to you and with no time she agreed and thanked me for that. So thank you so much for that. Let's just go ahead and use this as a reference point. As you see, the very first viewport of your case study has a larger name of the project. At the same time, it talks about the final version of the UI. So this is how the final UI would be translated into right from the problem statement to a digital solution. Going forward, there's a clear indication about what's the name of the project, what were the actual requirements. So user experience design and branding was the actual requirement over here. Going forward, it's a clear indication about all the roles and all the deliverables that were required and all the tools that I use. At the same time, this is awesome that there's a complete design process which a couple of times is needed, may not be needed, it's not that necessary, but this gives a clear idea to the hiring manager or the recruiter that these are the complete steps that the user or the product designer has been through. So that would eventually make me curious to see how did she or he did a competitive analysis, then to the user journey, then to high-fidelity wireframe, then to the usability testing, and then next steps. So definitely it's a good idea to put, but make sure that you put it in a very creative way that would, you know, give some information and stats about it. So going forward, there's a clean header like we discussed. We can make it less cluttered, put it in pointer. So yes, here's a huge header over here. She also tried to put it in pointer because it would become very difficult to read paragraphs, and that's a very good thing that she's done over here. We have point 1, point 2, point 3, point 4. Then going back to the process, we read that there's some sort of literature review, then there's a user survey. So going forward, yes, there's a literature survey. The next step that we have over here is directly the insight. As the amount of experience that I have in terms of recruitment and hiring, I would be more than happy if she could have already explained or showed the screenshot of the insights question. So that I get to understand that out of 20 people, there were 10 female, 10 male. This is the actual answer given that by people, maximum people rewarded in such a way. So that would be more of a help to me, I would suggest. Going forward, we came to a conclusion that this is something that we need to propose as a solution, create an application that has a large library of plants gardening tools. So very clear glimpse of the final project. Then going forward, let us say this is the actual time or the place where the complete process starts. It always starts with assumptions and hypothesis, which you eventually have to prove right or wrong. So this is pretty good. So again, if you try to see, everything is so spaced out, less cluttered, that I can easily read out that the process is all about assumptions, then research, then some other steps. So this is very good. Uh, going forward, research, like we discussed about stats, this is pretty good over here. There are huge numbers. The heading is very pretty clear that survey was taken with 58 people. Survey questions were 17. Interview, there were 5 one-on-one personal interviews as such. Then there's a complete data of the user research. The stats is so upfront that 100% of the people prefer something, 94% of the people said something like this, 92% of the people wanted to do something. So this is very good in terms of data consumption and statistics rather than having multiple paragraphs around it. Going forward, I would personally would have given this as a larger heading that this is the takeaway from my user research, which is eventually given over here in some way or the other. But this would be more than, you know, it's a good option to show a greater heading saying that these are the following takeaway from my research work. So it's again in pointer, that's pretty good. You're talking about persona, great. There are images, the persona is pretty clear, the pain points, the goals and service are pretty clear. There's this user journey going, talking about the complete user journey that is user would go through. Definitely there's competitive analysis. So that's very good that everything that you explained over here as a process that I'm going to do step number 1, step number 2, then interview, then competitive analysis, then persona. So everything is over there. So everything that you promised as a process is over there. So I'm going to go ahead with the complete portfolio and just scan it down. Great. Then there is something called design system. Because this project required a branding theme, that's why I believe this design system thing is over here. But when you talk about your UX portfolio, UX case study, you don't actually have to put all your branding elements and visuals or UI. You can definitely talk till a point where your wireframes comes. Yeah, over here, the wireframes is over here. So again, there's a huge heading that segregates the previous section, which was design system, from my wireframes and testing. So this is again very good Good way to represent your heading and segregate the data. Hand sketch wireframes, pretty good. So she has given all the examples of the things or the direction that she would want to take as a UI or the wireframes. Then there were few other pointers. Then there's a good visual segregation or separation where the actual low-fidelity wireframes is given over here. Then there was some sort of usability testing. So this is the thing that I was talking about. If you don't have any experience and if you decided to solve a problem statement Make sure that you follow all these steps. You validate the problem statement and you also validate the solution. So to validate your solution, it, you know, gives you extra brownie points that as an HR or a hiring manager, I can see he or she is not only solving the problem statement but also validated the problem statement. So if I go ahead and ask about why did you choose something like this, he or she might have an exact data saying that, you know, 5, 3 out of 5 users wanted to have this, or 2 out of 5 users you know, gave this suggestion. So that's pretty good. So everything that the user had to say is reflected over here, be it a positive or negative point. So that's again very good. So going forward, iteration, yes, once you are, once you are done through your usability testing, there's some sort of iterations that you do. Then there's accessibility improvements, that's awesome. There's a prototype, there's all the visual elements. It's quite rich in terms of showing a case study. This is the best part of it that you actually have a clickable prototype of the complete project or the process. You can definitely go in and experience yourself as a hiring manager or as a recruiter. So that's pretty good. And what's the next step? So definitely next step would be to, you know, write blogs and plant exchange. For you, the next step would be visual once you are done with your wireframe and usability testing. Lesson learned, awesome. What was your actual experience or learning throughout the complete project. This is pretty good, but this is a very good option to do it. I've seen with a couple of portfolios that I've, I've studied for a longer years. And once you end your portfolio, it all ends with your contact details. So that's pretty good. Once I'm done through it, I can definitely go ahead and contact you or see your resume or want to see more of your projects. So that's pretty good. So that was all about the case study or direction or a reference point for you. So if you're getting started with your actual portfolio, so this is a good reference to get started with and understand what is the amount of details and depth that you need to go, what are the points that you need to cover. So do use this as a reference. You can definitely go out there and go to some other websites and search for yourself, pick up some case studies, specifically case studies, and try to implement them. You know, it's okay to replicate them in, in the starting phases and then improve it rather than not getting started at all.

That was all about episode number 5 of Roadmap to User Experience Design. If you have any questions, please put that into a comment, and if you also want me to review your design portfolio, drop that into the comment and I will revert back to you quickly. This is me, Anirudh Palaskar, signing it off. See you in episode number 6, where I'm going to talk about service-based companies versus a product-based company. Till then, bye-bye.