Reviewing Product, UX and UI portfolios is something I enjoy doing not just in a work context (hiring) but also whenever I have downtime. Generally speaking, looking at examples of good design is always an appealing perspective. But there is more to it.

By reviewing portfolio pieces I can also learn more about mastering the art of presenting back information.

One of the hardest things to do after having worked for months or even years on a project is trying to summarise it in a single page.

• What is the key information you want to pass across?
• What makes you proud to have worked on this project?
• What did you learn?
• What new insights will you leverage in the future?

Those are tough questions.

In a previous article, I talked about 3 things most UX/UI portfolios don’t include but should.

Now, building on top of that, I want to share with you a methodology that most of the best design portfolios adopt to make their projects & case studies stand out.

The Method 💡

Life-story time.

I recently co-founded a product design studio (http://hausofel.com) which helps entrepreneurs and new businesses succeed during their early stages.

In doing so I realised how important it is to be hyper-specific about your contribution to a project.

But why?

Stakeholders and especially business owners want to know exactly what you helped to achieve and how you can replicate that with them. This can’t be stressed enough. When writing about one of your case studies or portfolio projects, please, please, please do not talk about it in an over-generic way. This happens a lot when you see portfolios of designers who worked in agencies or design studios.

So what?

• How big was the team?
• What was your role?
• How did the team benefit from your presence?
• And what unique perspective did you bring to the table?

The above are all very valid points which could help mitigate the issue of being overly generic when playing back information.

My suggestion though is to go one step further. Trying using the “so what” methodology:

When talking about a topic and making a statement, ask yourself the question “so what!”. This will help frame the context for the following paragraph.

“so what!” in British English:

informal for

what importance does that have?

• The business had already an existing platform? SO WHAT! Was that not well received by its customers? Was it not performing well according to data collection? Were there any learnings to leverage from the as-is product?
• The client came to you/your agency to solve this problem. SO WHAT! Were you part of the initial presentation? What was the highlight? What was the key insight you captured from the kick-off meeting?
• You joined the team involved in this project. SO WHAT! Why you? What was your main task/goal? How long was your engagement? How big was the team and which responsibilities did you have?
• The outcome was a success? SO WHAT! What makes you say that? What were the key learnings and what would you have done differently if you had to go over it again?
• Finally, you decided to share this project with the world through your portfolio. SO WHAT! Why is this project important to you? And what was your unique influence on it? Why DO YOU define it as a successful project?

Wrap-up 🌯

Ask yourself the question SO WHAT! to establish how you should be building up on your previous statement. If no logical thing comes to mind, then the previous statement is probably an extra that could be cut from your portfolio piece.

Remember that most people spend between 1–3 minutes reviewing a portfolio project. The fluff on the side does not benefit anyone.

Be specific about YOUR contribution and leverage this methodology to “go niche”. Avoid staying overly vague about the project. If you only contributed to building a design system, talk about that. If you only focused on the visuals, don’t show crazy complex flows. On the contrary, if your main input was heavy UX, show your outputs and avoid displaying flashy visual designs that maybe some other practitioner did.

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