Does Size Matter? My 80/20 Rule in Making a UX Portfolio

How long should your portfolio be? What type of success metric should we consider? Let’s dig in deep about building your portfolio.

When I was starting, a lot of the portfolios I scouted looked the same. The design thinking process is always followed in a narrowed structure flow, personas of the same template, thousands of words about how things were done, sketches of screens, tools, prototypes, or barely showing any screens, etc.

As a Design Mentor, I’ve been speaking to students about building their portfolios. It has always been the conventional way of portraying things — don’t get me wrong, having a baseline on how you do things is good but do not forget that the purpose of your portfolio is for you to be interviewed.

The StoryBrand Framework, Photo by South Mountain Messaging

This has been talked about in the StoryBrand framework. It is how you tell a story by keeping your audience target hooked until you lead and guide them until the end. When creating a portfolio, your brand is not the project you make; it’s YOU. You are your brand, and so our goal is clear:

How might we improve your portfolio so that the hiring team notices you?

Three highlights you can focus on instead of creating designs in a rigid structure:

• Constraints — talk about what didn’t work. This allows your interviewers to gauge your thinking process. How you consider different solutions, how you ask for requirements, design feasibilities, and how you handle stakeholders.

Design by Jasmae Mino, a sample of a series of constraints

• Be results-driven — this just doesn’t mean showing your process. It’s about sharing what you can bring to the table. Helping your potential employers know how UX can help their business is a great factor in boosting your application.

Design by Jasmae Mino, a sample of results-driven visuals for a UX portfolio

• Shifting to story-telling — just like in the movies or TV shows/series, you need to be able to put certain scenarios together. When doing so, ensure that you are structuring your story well. Keep in mind that you need to reach a cohesive end. A good example is showing your Before and After screens, or if you have wireframes add them side-by-side with your hi-fi designs.

It’s important to note that the way you build your portfolio doesn’t have to be grand but you can improve them by adding Before & After screens, etc. -Design by Jasmae Mino

So to answer the question, “Does size matter?”. It doesn’t. What matters is how you keep your users (hiring team) engaged and how you take your users from start to end.

In addition, you might also try showing your storytelling skills by using a comprehensible structure instead:

• Overview — What is the project about? Share your role, and impact as a designer, and splash out as much design overview as you can.
• Problem — What were you trying to solve?
• Goals — What was the business and user goal?
• Process — The keyword here is ‘SHOW’. Enough with the long essay texts. Your portfolio should be showing rather than telling. Remember, people scan.
• Design — Splash out designs, show before & after (if any).
• Impact — What changed after your design was implemented? Add your learnings and what you could have done differently as well.

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