Crafting A Personal Brand Through Your Design Portfolio

93% of Junior UX portfolios I see don't do this. 😔 👇 ↳ Reflect Real-World Problem Solving: → Many portfolios show beautiful interfaces but fail to show the designer's process of solving problems that matter. 💡 Pro tip: If you're new to UX, don't use bootcamp or school projects only. Get freelance or hackathon work as case studies. ↳ Have Personal Branding: → Many UXers don't give enough background on themselves. Companies hire you, not your 𝐩𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐨. ↳ Showcase Collaboration and Feedback: → It's rare to see a designer's ability to: ✅ Work on a team ✅ Articulate their working process ✅ Show their design changes based on feedback ↳ Show the Research Process: → The best case studies tend to: ✅ Showcase qualitative and quantitative data to back their designs ✅ Incorporate their insights into their solutions ↳ Show Empathy and Understanding: → I've noticed many junior designers have zero context to their users and the business in their case studies. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯: → Don't demonstrate their problem-solving process → Don't tell me why they did what they did and why it matters → Don't explain why their solutions help users and the business 🥇 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻: ☑ Craft a compelling story for your case studies that don't bore your reader to death ☠️. ☑ Show the results: what went wrong, what went right and what did you learn? ☑ Show how you've worked with others and leveraged feedback in your designs. ☑ Show your research process, how you gathered and interpreted data, and why it informed your design decisions. ☑ Articulate what problems you tackled and why. Show your thought process and how your design solves these issues effectively. ☑ Please for heaven's sake, get a real portfolio website. In this competitive market Dribbble sites, Behance sites, PDFs, and Figma files are not enough. ✨ Portfolios are hard to maintain and even harder to grow, but if you care about your UX career they are worth it. --- PS: What's stopping you from finishing your portfolio? Follow me, John Balboa. I swear I'm friendly and I won't detach your components.

I was talking to a hiring manager who said something that stuck with me: “The best portfolios are everywhere. I’m looking for people who get it.” He wants someone who can clearly show how they think and how they fit. That’s where some portfolios fall short. I’ve reviewed hundreds of portfolios over the years. One thing is consistent and great work showing the final product with no context can get overlooked. Think about how to make it easy to understand:
 - What problem were you solving?
 - Why did you make certain decisions?
 - What was your role in the project?
 - What came out of it? (Impact, learnings, results) Tailor it to the role:
 - Want a UX job? Show UX work. Walk us through your research, early sketches, wireframes, testing, not branding projects. - Going for a visual/brand design role? Highlight your layouts, redesigns or campaigns. - Applying for a senior position? Make sure we can see leadership, not just execution. Tell the story, not just the outcome:
Some of the strongest portfolios I’ve seen had the goal, their role, process shots or early ideas and a short note on what worked. It doesn’t have to be everything but it does have to be clear. Your portfolio is your voice when you’re not in the room so help the viewer understand how you think, what you care about and why you're the right fit. I've learned a lot from the hiring managers and creative directors I've worked with over the years and I’m grateful for the insight they’ve shared. Every hiring manager sees things a little differently but I hope some of this helps someone out there trying to figure out how to stand out.

Jr. UX designers, if you are struggling to talk about your past career, you might be thinking about it in the wrong way… As UX designers, we are constantly tasked to brainstorm i n n o v a t i v e solutions to fill gaps for our clients. Our notebooks are filled with sketches of good, bad, ugly ideas. But when it comes to brainstorming about ourselves, our whiteboards are empty. I’ve seen this hundreds of times, been there, and maybe this is you… Are you using the same old buzzwords and phrases to describe yourself: “I’m a storyteller.” “I’m a curious, problem solver.” Is that really how someone who actually solves problems, talks? As a career changer, you have a whole arsenal of ideas that you can use to see what makes the most compelling representation of how you think and operate. Start thinking of your personal branding as a design challenge.   If a client came to you and was like, “give me an innovative solution to order food,” would you immediately pitch Doordash? No! You’d probably assess what already exists, think about what the customer needs are, and start thinking about different ideas. Let’s take Charlie, 8th grade teacher turned UXas. How can he approach personal branding as a UX case study? User research: Hiring managers are trying to find a UXer that exhibits skills of iteration and problem solving Painpoints: All the candidates look the same, use the same language, and it’s difficult to differentiate people who are actually creative, and those that just use buzzwords How might we: convey iteration and problem solving abilities about Charlie? Stakeholder research: Upon closer inspection of available materials, you see that Charlie has been an 8th grade teacher for 7 years and has several examples of solving problems secretly tucked away. Competitor analysis: How does everyone else describe themselves in their personal branding? What can we do differently? Brainstorming: Thinking about limited time and resources, let’s start sketching solutions with what we already have: stories and skills from being a teacher Ideas: Every year Charlie iterates on his lesson plans as the requirements from the State change, and from student feedback. He runs experiments on which projects keep his students the most engaged, which have the highest adoption rates. He collects feedback after different projects to see what needs improvement. Wireframing: Charlie makes a list of his top examples of teaching that seem to overlap with UX the best. UI design: Rewriting and rewriting. Charlie has to figure out how to best present the past examples to engage users and get them from point A to B in a cohesive and consistent way. User testing: Getting feedback from mentors, people on Linkedin, seeing what gets traction from hiring managers Do you ever feel like you’re starting from a blank canvas when it comes to UX? Take a step back and see what you already have to work with. #uxdesign #personalbranding