5 of the most common mistakes on a junior UX portfolio — and how to fix them
By: Frankie Kastenbaum
Tags: UI Design, UI, UX, Portfolio, Careers

I truly believe your portfolio says it all. Through the way you present your work, to the interactions among the screens, it proves that you can not only think about a user’s experience, but also the handoff. Your UX portfolio, in my opinion, is really your most important case study.

Within this past week, I took the initiative to offer portfolio reviews to my LinkedIn network. To my amazement, nearly 50 new UX Designers reached out to me to accept the offer, and although 50 portfolios were a lot to examine in a week’s time, it led to me notice these 5 main reoccurring mistakes.

Mistake #1: Presenting Your Case Studies as a Checklist of Deliverables

In order for us to solve our problem at hand, we create many deliverables throughout our process so that we can ultimately reach our finalized solution. Let me be clear, I am not trying to correct your physical process, I am solely speaking towards how you discuss your process.

Why It’s a Problem

Stop and think for one second about how many deliverables you create for a project. You have your persona, affinity map, user journey, user flow…. you get my point. The list goes on and on. This becomes problematic within a case study because it causes the length to increase and in most cases, creates what feels like an endless scroll for a user.

What to Do Instead

Instead of providing a play by play of your entire process with the detailed deliverables, consider thinking about your case study as a story. And yes, this story should be a different one than your process. In order to do this it can be helpful to consider these questions:

What was the problem you were trying to solve? (objective) Why were you solving this problem? (what users said) How did you solve this problem? (methods used) What was the finalized solution? (UI designs) What did you learn? (key takeaways or next steps)

By creating a case study with these questions in mind it helps to create a narrative that is driven by your deliverables, and which ultimately creates a better user flow. Which, in other words, creates a better overall user experience!

Mistake #2: Forgetting Who Your User Is

I began this article by stating that your portfolio is your most important case study and this mistake is a perfect example of that. For all of our projects, we think about the target user, whether through a persona or proto persona, so why should your portfolio be different?

Why It’s a Problem

Your portfolio is the main asset a Hiring Manager or company will look to for your skillset. If you are unable to show that you can consider the user of your portfolio, then I am sorry to say, but then there will be a high chance you will not be hearing back for that open role. Continuing this, keep in mind that on average a portfolio is looked at for 30–60 seconds. That is why if you do not consider your reader when designing, there is a high chance your user will not be able to reach the same takeaways as you would want them to.

What to Do Instead

I like to think of my case studies as having two personas.

The Skimmer The In-depth Reader with a Glass of Wine

When designing for the first persona, The Skimmer, it is helpful to read through your paragraphs of text and highlight the keywords or phrases. The idea here is that if someone was to only read the highlighted text, then they would still be able to relay back to you what your project was, how you solved for a solution, and what the final outcome was. In other words, make your portfolio scannable.

For the second persona, you have probably already done the bulk of the work. This will be the individual who wants to read all the nitty-gritty of your process, taking a deeper dive into your deliverables.

By creating two personas, you allow for a wider audience and for no-one to feel like they were left out.

Mistake #3: Center-aligning Paragraphs of Text

Before diving into this mistake, I do want to acknowledge that I am aware that many individuals transition into UX from another field, many not from a design background. With that said, I want to argue that this point is centered (no pun intended) on user experience rather than on design.

Why It’s a Mistake

Test this out for me, take a few paragraphs of text, center align them, and try to read them. You might not be able to actually catch this since we have taught our brains to read text in this format, but it actually takes us longer to read as each line of text starts in a different spot.

What to Do Instead

Left-align all paragraphs or groups of paragraphs you have in your case studies. If you think about it, all books are printed with left-aligned text. This was not because of the aesthetic of it, but rather, the user experience since our brains have an easier time reading text in this format as each line starts in the exact same spot.

Mistake #4: Inconsistent Personal Branding

When applying for a position several deliverables or materials are submitted: a resume, a portfolio, and a cover letter. At the end of the day each one is a representation of yourself, so why should you create multiple brand identities?

Why It’s a Problem

Open jobs attract an insane number of applicants, causing one individual to look at a stack of applications at once. With this in mind, it can be difficult for that individual to keep track of all the applicants, better yet to keep track of the applicants who look like they could be three different ones.

What to Do Instead

Maybe this is the Graphic Designer in me, but I stress the importance of creating a single brand identity for yourself that you can use on all of your materials. This can range from a single color you use throughout your materials, to a full style guide with typography, colors, and a logo. At the end of the day, this not only helps tie all your materials together, but it also shows that you understand a style guide and that you value consistency.

Mistake #5: Uploading Small and Blurry Images

Whether you are a UX /UI Designer, UX Generalist, or UX Researcher, images in your case studies help to break up sections of text and to provide another perspective.

Why It’s a Problem

Images of mockups and sections of your process can be super effective, but that is only true when the details are completely readable. Throughout my reviews, many times I felt as if images had been added as a checklist item or as a way to just change up the format. Once again bring it back to the overall user experience and your narrative; what is the benefit of adding something your user will not be able to do anything with?

What to Do Instead

Pretty simple, upload images of the best quality and of a size that showcases all the details, even the small ones. This is super important as it proves to a potential employer that your hand-off will be of the best quality.