Portfolio guide for UX/UI designers
Practical tips to showcase your skills
Making a portfolio is not a perfect science, of course, so I’m not claiming this is the best recipe possible. A lot also depends on who’s the viewer of such portfolio. Any recruiter/company might have their own criteria when judging someone’s work.
Last year though, I refreshed mine and I’ve been contacted from a number of companies, including Netflix, Google and Amazon, so I thought of sharing what I did and actually what I look for myself when I get portfolios from candidates.
Why having a portfolio in first place?
There are platforms out there, like Behance and Dribbble, that offer a simple and easy way to upload and present your work, with the big advantage of being part of a community, getting feedback, getting followers and exposure. Great, sure. I strongly advice to do that.
But if you want to get a job as a designer of digital products, I think it’s quite weird you don’t have one for yourself. It’s a matter of credibility and personal branding, plus it looks lazy.
The structure
First of all, let’s talk about the main sections/pages you want to have in your portfolio.
So, we have four top level pages: Home, Archive, About and Contacts. And one second level: the project page (one for each project, obviously).
I don’t feel the need of any more pages. Some people might not even want the Archive section, but I think it doesn’t hurt to have a place to collect relevant work that didn’t make it to the main showcase.
Home:
This is the the shop window of your portfolio, the first thing visitors see, so it’s better to get this right.
My advice is to show here 3–5 main projects, the ones you think highlight your skills the best.
How to choose which ones?
They have to be reasonably recent, not necessarily done in the current or previous year, but probably not 4+ years old (do not throw them away though). This industry, as you know, is constantly changing, and presenting yourself with works that are too dated, could let people think you’re not up to date with the current trends and technologies.
Ideally these projects should be able to show an array of skills you want to show-off. You may pick one project because of the exquisite visual design, another because of the cutting edge technology involved, another one because of excellent KPI performances (i.e. app downloads or revenues), or awards won, etc…
You can be creative with the way you want to present here. Can be a long scrolling page, or full screen slides, or a grid or basically any kind of layout you want, as long as it’s easy to navigate and it makes your work stand out. Don’t be too creative just for the sake of being so, the point here is showing the work you have done and making it easy to be viewed.
Before the selected projects, you can start with a brief introduction about yourself and your role. Very brief.
More details will follow in the About page.
Archive:
Here’s where you put stuff that wasn’t relevant enough to be on the front page.
I’m not saying to put EVERY single work you have done here, you still have to select only the best projects. But this is a place where the hiring manager/client can get a more in-depth idea of what you can do. Maybe there are works that less recent, but you are proud of. Or smaller projects that have something to say about excellent secondary skills (i.e. animation).
A redesign you made as an exercise, that made that famous product so much better. Etc…
On this page you can have filters, in case you have a certain number of projects. But mind to have at least 3+ projects for each category. Filtering and getting 1 single project as a result is pretty sad.
About:
Be creative and expressive, but don’t go too far out there. Most of all: be brief.
- short bio
- main skills
- secondary skills
- tools you can use
- work experiences timeline
- awards (if any)
- extra (i.e. you write on Medium)
Keep it schematic, divided in clear sections for a quick scan on a second visit. No walls of text!
Socials go here. Add just the professional ones: LinkedIn, Behance, Dribbble. Maybe Instagram if you use it to show your work, otherwise don’t.
Forget Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and anything else.
Contacts:
Make it as easy as possible. A form is always nice to have: name, email, subject and message. Keep the subject optional.
Depending on your take on privacy, you may want to add your phone number for a more direct contact.
Socials might go here, if you prefer, or you could even repeat them.
Project Page
This is clearly a key element of your portfolio.
There are mainly 3 kinds of approaches for this page:
- Same layout for all projects. You just change the content, but the structure of the page will be the same for all. It’s faster and visitors learn their way to the info they need in each project.
- A different layout on each project. Each page is like its own product page. You think of it as if you were designing a landing page for each project you present. There’s no fixed scheme, elements might be reused, but the order and arrangement and even color palette change from project to project.
This approach is a way itself of showing more of your designing skills, it makes each project look more valuable and it’s of course less boring. It takes obviously a bigger effort. - An hybrid approach (what I did for mine). There’s a part that stays the same for all the projects, for example a hero image, an introduction to explain what the project is about, basic info like year, client, your role, etc…
Then what follows is different for each project, as described in the previous point.
The things you should include in each project page
Of course each case history has its own story, but there are things you should always try to include:
- brief introduction to provide context. What was the need you wanted to meet, what was the situation before you started, the scope of the project, the duration…
- basic info: year, client/company, agency if any. And don’t forget to credit other designers.
- your role. It has to be clear what was your role on the project. What did you do.
- results. If you have data on how the product performed, how it got better after your intervention, good reviews, awards and so on, don’t hesitate to provide them.
Now the process:
- research and/or inspiration. It’s good to describe part of the preliminary work. What did you research, what inspired you, what findings brought you to the solution. Again, keep it short.
- wireframes/IA/flows. Before getting to the treasure, show the map. Also in this case, no need to show everything. You just need to show you did your homework.
- images of the design. Well, of course. Don’t go overboard with these though. Select the screens that you believe are the best to illustrate the design. Make also some mockups. You don’t need to put ALL the artworks.
Take some components, like icons, buttons, cards, etc out of the screens and show them isolated from the rest, to provide a more detailed view of the work. - videos. Seeing things in motion always have a different impact than just static screen. Especially now, where interactions, microinteractions, animated UI components play a big role in digital products, videos/gifs can be a valuable aid. A screen capture of the real thing or a prototype is ideal.
Useful Tools
You don’t need to be a developer nor to reinvent the wheel. There are easy ways to make a custom portfolio without having to start from scratch or even write a single line of code.
Personally I chose to use Semplice, a very customizable portfolio template for Wordpress (I’m not paid to say this).
It takes a couple hours (max) to fully get confident with the tool and even start adding pretty cool animations to your project pages.
For mockups you can take a look on Pixeden and Graphicburger (again, unfortunately not paid to say this).
Lastly, for inspiration on great portfolios you can check medium.com/@bestfolios
PS: In case you’re wondering: sorry, my portfolio is completely private and password protected.
Tips? Suggestions? Don’t hesitate to comment.
Was it useful? Claps and shares are always appreciated.
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My new book “Designing Digital Products for Kids”! Out December the 4th!
Learn the secrets to design successful digital products for children.
You’ll find answers to all your questions regarding the industry, and its peculiarities in 📐 UX design, 🎨 UI design, 🔍 user testing, 📈 business strategies, and much more.
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