Portfolio Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Design Career

I reviewed 2,000+ product design portfolios last year. Avoid these mistakes that 90% make: 1. 𝗧𝗢𝗢 𝗠𝗔𝗡𝗬 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗝𝗘𝗖𝗧𝗦 ❌ Showcasing every project you’ve ever worked on. ✅ 3-4 strong case studies with depth are better than 10 shallow or old ones. 2. WEAK VISUAL HIERARCHY ❌ Walls of text, tiny images. ✅ Clear sections, bold headings, and visuals that guide the viewer. 3. CONFUSING NAVIGATION ❌ Hidden menus, unclear labels, or requiring too many clicks to find case studies. ✅ Make it effortless: clear sections, easy-to-find projects, and a simple way to contact you. 4. SLOW OR CLUNKY WEBSITE ❌ Huge images, broken links, animations taking 3+ seconds to load. ✅ Your portfolio is your first impression. Make it fast and seamless. 5. NO PROCESS, JUST FINAL SCREENS ❌ A bunch of polished UI shots with no explanation. ✅ Show your thinking: research, sketches, iterations, and decisions. 6. UNCLEAR ROLES ❌ Instead of saying “We redesigned the onboarding flow.” ✅ Say: “I led UX research and wireframing, a teammate handled UI.” 7. NO METRICS ❌ “Designed a new dashboard.” ✅ “New design increased user engagement by 20% and reduced support tickets by 15%.” 8. NO PROBLEM STATEMENT ❌ “Redesigned the checkout flow.” ✅ “Users abandoned checkout at 65%. I streamlined the flow, reducing drop-off by 30%.” 9. OUTDATED OR IRRELEVANT WORK ❌ Student projects from 5+ years ago. ✅ Keep it fresh. Show work that aligns with the jobs you want. 10. NO PERSONALITY ❌ Generic “I love solving problems” statements. ✅ What makes you you? Show your voice, interests, and approach to design. Which of these mistakes have you seen or made? #uxhiring #design #productdesign #portfolio

In the past few months, I’ve reviewed over 400 design portfolios while seeking to fill a mid-level design position (2-3 years of experience). More than 90% of these portfolios didn’t pass the screening process. One striking observation was that around 75% of all portfolios looked the same. If your portfolio resembles a basic template, you’re doing something wrong. Don’t get me wrong, perfect portfolios don’t exist, and I’m definitely not saying you should go overboard. However, hiring managers are reviewing many portfolios at once, and standing out with a well-designed portfolio that balances UX with a beautiful and aesthetically pleasing UI will definitely grab the hiring manager’s attention and win you more time. Top Mistakes: 1. Using the Same Design Process for All Projects: • If you have a one-size-fits-all design process, it indicates inexperience. Every project has different needs, requirements, constraints, and challenges. I want to see the challenges you’ve faced in the design process, what methods you chose to overcome a particular challenge, and why you chose that method. 2. Not Connecting Business Goals/Needs to Your Solutions: • Once I open one of your case studies, I want to see what problem you are solving and how it will help the business. Clearly linking your design solutions to business objectives demonstrates a deeper understanding of the impact of your work. 3. Not Enough Exploration: • Most portfolios I reviewed didn’t show enough solution exploration. They usually display only the chosen solution. I want to know which other solutions you considered, why you chose a particular solution over the others, and how you determined this was the best solution. 4. Too Much Clutter in Case Studies: • One of the greatest challenges in designing your portfolio is deciding how much detail to include in your case studies. Too much detail can overwhelm users (hiring managers), causing them to not finish reading your case study, which lowers your chances of getting an interview. Too little detail results in incomplete stories, which also lowers your chances. Focusing on the bigger picture and ensuring your case study is easily scannable is crucial. Make sure a user can scan and understand your case study within 30 seconds. Final Advice: There’s so much advice out there about this subject. If I have to leave you with one thing from this post, it would be to treat your portfolio as a real product design project and understand your audience really well. A well-crafted portfolio that effectively communicates your design process, challenges, and solutions can significantly enhance your chances of standing out to hiring managers.”

Tiny details in your portfolio—and what they tell me At UX studio, I’ve hired many designers and reviewed thousands of portfolios over the years. Today, even the smallest details can tell me a lot about who you are as a designer and how you approach your work. Let me show you what I mean: 🚩 You send a portfolio with too many, irrelevant projects—This tells me that you either didn’t do your research on our company, or worse, you don’t know how to prioritize. I’m not looking for quantity; I’m looking for quality and relevance. 👍 You have a domain—When you send over a portfolio with yourname.com, it tells me you take your work and personal brand seriously. It’s a small detail, but it speaks volumes about your professionalism. 🚩 You send a PDF portfolio—My first impression is that you’re not aware of the trends, or you don’t know how to create a website in 2024. (If that’s the case, get started with UXfolio, you’ll see how easy it actually is.) 👍 You mention other people in your team—It says that you’re a team player. In our field, collaboration is key, and working well with others is non-negotiable. 🚩 Your case study process is too polished—If all your projects follow the same textbook-perfect structure, it tells me that you might not have real-world experience. Real projects are messy, collaborative, and complex. 👍 You show iterations—Showing the evolution of your designs, including initial sketches, wireframes, and prototypes tells me that you took many factors into consideration before ending up with a nice, flashy UI. 🚩 Your writing is ambiguous—Unfinished sentences, typos, and grammar mistakes all tell me that you don’t pay attention to details. Communication is a huge part of what we do, and if it’s hard to understand your work, it’s going to be hard to work with you. 👍 Your portfolio has a unique perspective—It tells me you have creativity and passion and you will not end up with generic, uninspired designs. While the red flags in a portfolio make me cautious, I always give candidates a chance to prove my first impression wrong. However, it’s helpful to know what the tiny parts of your portfolio say about you and your work. Anything to add to this list? Let me know in the comments!

I've looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of UX portfolios. Here's one of the biggest mistakes aspiring UX designers make with the case studies in their portfolios: They choose case studies that don't solve a REAL user and business problem AND/OR they choose problems that have already been solved by many different companies/apps. For example, these are three case studies from a real portfolio I looked at not too long ago... 1. An insurance app for a brand new, made up company 2. A conceptual app called "Mixer" that helps people find concerts 3. A conceptual crypto tracker Here's the problem with each of these. When you make up a company to suit your case study, it means that everything you do has 0 constraints. You have to create your own design system and none of your work has to actually fit into an existing product. All of that is completely unrealistic AND is the exact opposite of how it will be when you have a job as a UX designer. When you land a job at a company, they will likely have a design system or at the very least design standards/a style guide to follow. Your work would also exist within an ecosystem of the product, which means it has to fit seamlessly in that environment. This is why if I were advising that aspiring designer, I would have told them to find an existing insurance app and find a problem there. Same for the concert finder and the crypto tracker. Basically, find problems for EXISTING companies. That way you can show your ability to find a problem for a real company AND that your work fits into an existing company's ecosystem. #UX #ProductDesign #UserExperience

I've reviewed thousands of UX portfolios since 2017, and here's one of the biggest mistakes I see: Your portfolio feels like it's selling the product you worked on. But in reality, your portfolio should be selling the product of YOU. Too many portfolios focus on the end features and shiny design, but they miss the mark by not highlighting the process and decisions that got them there. Here are a few things recruiters and hiring managers really want to see in your UX portfolio ... and hear in interviews 😉 - How you arrived at a decision or solution - How you iterated based on user feedback - What trade-offs you had to make and why - How you navigated challenges or constraints - How you collaborated with cross-functional teams - What you learned and how it informs your future work - Why you chose a specific type of research, method, etc - And honestly, so much more ... but I'll leave it here for now Your portfolio isn’t just a showcase of what you made; it’s a showcase of how you think. Helping UX and Product people create stronger portfolios that equip them to talk about their work in interviews effectively is just one of the "5 Sprints" we do inside Career Strategy Lab's 3-month UX and Product Job Search Accelerator. You can learn more here: https://lnkd.in/gjeyFT8P Feel free to DM me here on LinkedIn if you have questions or use the chat widget on our website. Hope this re-frame about UX portfolios helps you see how you might improve your own portfolio so it meets the needs of your users (aka recruiters and hiring managers) 💜 #ux #uxdesign #productdesign

Your portfolio might be working against you and you wouldn’t even know it. After reviewing 200+ portfolios, I’ve seen some common patterns that quietly weaken the story you're trying to tell. The good news? They’re fixable. The better news? Avoiding them helps your work shine. Here are the usual suspects: → Too much movement. Its fun, but often distracting → Blurry images. They instantly lower the quality of your work → Low contrast text . Accessibility matters, and so does readability → Everything oversized. Less space = more scrolling and less focus → Unclickable case study previews. A small interaction detail that makes a big difference I don’t say this to nitpick, but rather to try and help you. If you’re working on yours, take a second look. These little things speak volumes.

We all know we're supposed to "show instead of tell." But most design portfolios fail to do this and here's why. 👇 Designers love showcasing their raw work in their portfolios including outputs or deliverables such as: → Sketches → Diagrams → User flows → Wireframes → Sticky notes → Journey maps But to be honest, 90% of the time, I have absolutely no idea what is going on in those images. For example, I'll often come across a screenshot or picture of 25+ sticky notes, but: → They are too zoomed out. → If I zoom in, they're too blurry. → Even if I can seem them, they're too overwhelming. Then I start asking myself questions such as: → Am I supposed to read every sticky note? → What's important about these sticky notes? → Is this worth my time and attention to decipher? This is where storytelling comes in. What if instead of showing a raw zoomed out screenshot of sticky notes, we instead pulled out the key highlights and takeaways? Then we can guide the reader's attention to what's actually important, and optionally include a link to the original raw image afterwards. This creates a far more compelling narrative for our audience (hiring managers and recruiters), and ensures we're showing the right level of detail that is necessary to understand the story. Now to be clear, I'm not saying you should entirely avoid raw images or assets (or even raw Figma files). For example, these can be effective during the interview process because the designer can use their voice to guide their audience through the image. But when it's an online written case study submitted with an application, then you won't be in the room when a hiring manager first sees it. In that moment, your story will need to stand on it's own. It will need to communicate the right level of clarity and detail to compel the hiring manager to offer you an interview. In summary, when we want to "show instead of tell", that doesn't mean slapping a raw screenshot or image in our portfolio. It means reflecting on how we're using our words and images to give context, clarity, and tell an impactful story. Use it effectively to your advantage. What are your thoughts? #ux #design #portfolio #casestudy #storytelling

Not getting another interview after your portfolio presentation? Maybe this is why 👇 I've sat in many portfolio presentations. I also work with numerous mentees, helping shape their stories. The biggest mistake I always see is not showcasing the why behind your work. Context. So many presentations go like this: - Hi, it me 👋 - Here's my first case - Here is a persona I made - Here is another persona I made - Here is an arbitrary user flow - Here is a sketch I made - Here is a wireframe I made - Here is the final solution - I learned a couple of things Your presentation should be a story, not a simple show and tell. Don't just tell your audience WHAT you did. Tell them WHY you did it. The why connects your thought process to your design. We want to hear what drove your decisions. Paint a vivid picture of the challenges you faced, the insights you stumbled upon, and the brainstorms that led to breakthroughs. What separates you from other designers is how you think and your design decisions. ✅ Frame your failures ✅ Dissect your decisions ✅ Incorporate your successes ✅ Create a beginning, middle, and end ✅ Show the path from initial idea to final Each slide and each statement should reveal a bit more about your thinking process. Details matter. Subtleties matter. They all add up to a powerful narrative. When your presentation is infused with purpose and passion, your work shines. It demonstrates your technical skills and your capacity for critical thinking, problem-solving, and empathetic understanding. And that's what sets you apart. Not just the sheer quality of your work but also the depth of thought put into it. Make them remember what you did and why you did it. Because, in the end, it's the why that truly matters. ------------------------------------- 🔔 Follow: Mollie Cox ♻ Repost to help others 💾 Save it for future use