Your design portfolio plays a key role in your career success. This holds true whether you’re applying for your first UX role or are in the process of leveling up to a more senior product design lead position.
Crafting an impressive design portfolio can be a daunting task, with numerous decisions to navigate. The process can quickly become overwhelming, considering the high stakes involved – making the right choices can lead to exciting job opportunities, while any missteps could potentially impact your chances."
Based on our experience of guiding students through the UX design portfolio process at Designlab, in this post we’re sharing some common mistakes found in design portfolios.
Feel free to treat this as a checklist the next time you’re working on your site!
14 Common UX Portfolio Mistakes to Avoid
Mistake 1: Forgetting the user
Your portfolio site is a UX design project in its own right. It needs to serve a number of user groups, each with a specific set of goals and content needs. As you build or revise your portfolio, take time to empathize with the situations your users are likely to be in.
Common user groups include: hiring managers, recruiters, and potential freelance clients. (These will vary depending on your area of specialization, and the seniority of the roles you’re targeting.)
For example, managers are likely to have dozens or even hundreds of resumes and portfolios to review in a limited time. Making your site easy to navigate shows respect towards those users, and says something important about your values as a designer.
Mistake 2: Showing too much work
When crafting your portfolio, it’s tempting to want to throw an extensive collection of 10, 15, or even 20 projects.
But for your portfolio, less is definitely more.
Since viewers will only click on one or two case studies when reviewing your portfolio, the sweet spot typically lies in the 3-5 range.
A thoughtful curation process involves asking yourself, "If a visitor were to view just one project, would I be content with this being their impression of my work?" By curating with precision, you can present a compelling and impactful portfolio.
Tip: If you have additional projects that you’re proud of and want to incorporate, a common action is to add them to your About page, so that they’re still accessible, but not the first thing that a viewer will click on.
Mistake 3: Showing too little work
On the flip side, having too few projects (less than 3) can negatively impact the impression you leave on your portfolio visitors. This is typically a challenge primarily for those who are first entering the industry—although it can also pose a difficulty if you’ve neglected to update your portfolio throughout the years and only have “old” projects to show.
Most graduates from intensive bootcamps like UX Academy will graduate with three or four in-depth projects from their studies.
However, unless this work is truly exceptional, portfolios with only student work can still feel a little thin. Look for ways to add depth to your portfolio, and aim to get your project count into that range of 3-5 portfolio-quality projects by including personal projects, freelance, and pro-bono work where applicable.
Mistake 4: Too much narrative
There are some fantastic examples of in-depth case studies on more senior designers’ sites—for example, Michael Evensen’s Soundcloud write-up and Simon Pan’s work with Uber—but this content works because it matches how substantial the project is.
However, in-depth written content is typically excessive for a more junior level role or case study. As a general rule of thumb: 3-5 sentences is usually sufficient for each paragraph.
Stay focused on communicating the essential points, and leave the flowery storytelling and details for live conversations.
Mistake 5: Too little narrative
It’s possible to go to the other extreme, and omit the storytelling completely from the project write ups in your portfolio. The problem with this approach is that it asks the user to understand your project through final images alone.
Your audience also wants to understand your design thinking and project process: how you went about defining and solving the design problem, what challenges you overcame, and, ideally, what the results of the work were in business terms.
You can craft a story around your work by including some process images, like sketches, research documents, and wireframes, and incorporating concise, informative passages of narrative text that walk the user through the project.
Aim for around 300-400 words of narrative for each project, clearly structured with headings and bullet points.
Tip: Including insights and reflections can be a great way to communicate more about yourself as a designer, and can help you stand out from the competition.
Mistake 6: Lack of clarity about your project role
Most professional design work is collaborative in some way, and it’s unlikely that you were responsible for 100% of the work on a project.
Be open and transparent about how you contributed to the project. This is also an opportunity to explain how you communicated and collaborated with the rest of the team, and how your contribution is evident in the final results.
Still new to the design world? Be honest about when a project is student work versus “real” work.