As an early-career agency UX designer in the heart of the Bay Area, I have had the amazing opportunity to be able to review many portfolios while helping my job to hire UX Design Interns. The thing about working in an agency is that it’s like getting experience on steroids — you do so much hands-on work that each year feels like it equates to 2 years of experience in a slower-paced company.

Here’s my main issue, however; many of the portfolios I see miss the mark.

They either contain so many extraneous items and so little content that the hiring manager would actually want to see or they don’t show enough process and design thinking. Somehow, some portfolios seem to accomplish this at the same time. Why do we go out of our way to complicate it so much?

It’s really as simple as this:

1. What is the problem space?
2. How did your designs solve this problem?

A lot of people complicate it, but I think the key experience is very simple…

Identify Problems ➡️ Showcase Solutions = Good Portfolio Experience

1. What is the problem space?

Properly setting up the problem space will ensure that when you get to your solutions it is that much more impressive. There are many things you can do to set up the problem space, whether the information is mock or real. The basic considerations are:

• What is the issue the team is trying to solve?
• What information do you have or can you postulate to inform that problem space?

The Problem

This is usually stated somewhere in your statement of work or clearly within your design brief.

The Information About the Problem

The information surrounding the problem can take many forms:

• Information about your users, and the personas that make them up. What do your users care about? Why are they using or interacting with your product?
• Information about how users are interacting with the product. What places do they spend the most time?
• Complaints from tech support. Where are users running into problems?

Here’s a great example of how to present a specific problem:

Step 1: Presenting the Problem

In this example, the candidate has clearly stated what the user pain points are, and where the problem is related to the design.

Tips & Tricks: Solving a complicated problem

A lot of the portfolios I see nowadays solve the same fundamental problem: making a webpage or app better. This can be a great way to show off your skills, but they should not be the only skillset you show.

Fresh new ideas to consider are:

• An air traffic controller dashboard
• A smartphone app that allows mobile city electricians to locate and manage problems in the city’s power grid
• An interface for a complicated piece of technology, such as a dialysis monitor or a heart monitor. Bonus: make it compliant with medical standards for design
• or … ask ChatGPT to create a prompt for you. I’ve seen some good prompts come out of the software, and I think it can only get better! Think of the bot’s suggestion as a starting point rather than the definitive guideline.

There are so many choices! It makes a candidate stand out when they do problem-solving besides the norm (and not another food delivery app).

2. How did your designs solve this problem?

This directly correlates to your Return on Investment (ROI) for a would-be company looking to hire you. At the end of the day, every hiring manager is asking themselves these questions when they are looking at your portfolio:

1. Can they solve the problems I need them to solve?
2. Can they do it well?

Solving Problems

I always advise people who ask me to present their solutions like this:

• Name the following relevant screens after the solution you’re solving
• Highlight the part that you are speaking about with a callout
• Explain why you made that solution (Hopefully, drawing back to principles of UX, psychology, and human physiology)

Here’s a great example of how to do so:

With the callout, we clearly know what the candidate changed, and why she changed it — it’s a small improvement, but it clearly shows her process, problem-solving skills, and her application of UX principles in aid to the company’s goal: solving the user pain point.

Putting it together

While a story-ish progression might seem the most natural, I actually recommend candidates put their items in this order:

1. The problems
2. The solutions
3. Everything else

Why? For one simple reason: on average, a recruiter or hiring manager won’t be spending more than a few minutes reviewing your portfolio. You want to put the important stuff first.

After that, if they want to dig deeper, they can scroll down to view more details — this allows them to see more details if they want to, but be able to get to the nitty-gritty.

A tip for making your portfolio easier to navigate

I truly believe every portfolio should have a table of contents at the beginning of each project. This will allow recruiters and hiring managers to quickly jump to sections they’re interested in. This can be especially useful if you do decide to put your solutions last, but still useful for recruiters to see if you have conducted specific methods, come to certain conclusions, or to see your design process.

Final Advice

The hiring pool for UXD’s is so saturated right now, I truly believe every little bit counts. Here are the other things I see often, and warn against:

• Your mockups should fit the screens. I see this one more than I should. Either the screen goes off the mockup (obscuring content in an obvious way) or there is extra room around the mockup that is obviously just blank space left transparent by the PNG.
• Spelling counts. Make sure you, a friend, or a mentor is going through your portfolio with a fine-tooth comb. Spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes are demerits. One of the most important skills in the UXD tool kit is communicating your designs effectively and cogently.
• The cleaner, the better. There is a difference between including things that show your personality, hobbies, or work ethic, and things that are just there to fill white space. Focus on the crucial elements and leave everything else blank or neutral. We want hiring managers to be able to focus on your work, not be distracted by a tiling background image.