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The Purposes Of A UX Portfolio

UX Portfolios are built to show skills and work experience to employers or clients through past projects, whether that be commercial or personal.

A UX Portfolio should convey the research or design activities undertaken. Basically what you did and how you got to there.

There are two types of UX portfolios, a UX/User Research Portfolio and a UX Design Portfolio.

But what is the difference between the two?

UX/User Research Portfolios

A UX/User Research Portfolio should include...

• Your role and why you were hired
• Questionnaire, learning, action and approach plans
• Users, stakeholders and team members you collaborated with
• Conceptual, mental models and possibly some sketches you produced
• User or customer journey maps
• Usability test plans, results and iterations
• Summary of findings or main takeaways
• Lessons learned
• Future Proposals

UX Design Portfolios

A UX Design Portfolio should include...

• Your role and why you were hired
• Design processes and decisions made
• Users, stakeholders and team members you collaborated with
• Annotated sketches, wire frames and mock ups you designed
• User journey maps
• Usability test plans, results, iterations or A/B test designs
• Lessons learned
• Future Proposals

Bonus Points For Business Benefits

What may also be included in both types of portfolio are the business benefits of the work performed and how it was conveyed to the business as a benefit, or return on investment (ROI).

Make Easy To Read, Structured And Usable

A UX portfolio should be simple and logical. That means no fancy designs or animations that will distract from the work being displayed.

The hiring manager viewing the portfolio will not have much time and will want to get to the guts of the information very quickly and easily.

The amount of times I have seen a portfolio that is way over engineered with glossy design and hard to read fonts is unbelievable. Don't do that!

 #uxdesign #uxresearch