Tips for Optimizing UX Case Studies

Each UX/Product design case study in your portfolio needs these 2 things: 1️⃣ A top overview/impact section This is a 30-second read that provides the summary of the project and the impact you had. It also includes the final mockups and/or prototype. This makes it easy for hiring managers to quickly understand what you did, the quality of your work, and the impact it had for the company you were working for. 2️⃣ The short story of what you accomplished Right after the overview, dive into the story of what happened during the case study. Use a story arc to get there: - Context/background - Conflict - Rising action - Climax - Falling action - Resolution Use the headlines to drive the story. People don't read the smaller text, so make sure your story can be skimmed by just reading the headlines. By the end of just reading the headlines, the hiring manager should have an idea of what you did/accomplished. Make sure to break up the story with images of what you were working on and/or illustrations for the story. The resolution really matters within this section. This is where you bring up the impact you had on the project/company. What came about as a result of your work? For example, there are objective metrics that can show your impact like:  - Increased conversions - Increased successful task completion - Decreased failure rate - Increased error-free rate - Decreased time on task And there are subjective measures like asking participants: - How difficult each task was - Their level of satisfaction with each task - Their overall satisfaction   This section is always the hardest for aspiring UX/product designers because they're working on conceptual projects. We recommend our students use the objective metrics of usability testing such as successful task completion, error-free rate, decreased time on task, etc. This can show that you truly moved the needle on a feature because you can compare the before and after numbers. This, of course, isn't possible if you're creating a new feature from scratch. Instead, this is where you lean on your usability testing and what users said. You can still talk about task completion, error-free rate, time on task, etc., you just can't compare them to anything because there isn't a product to compare them to. There's one last thing you can talk about within the resolution section... You can also talk about how you're a different person than when you began. What did you learn as a result of this project? How are you a changed person? After all, you are telling a story and both you AND the product you were working on are the heroes of the story. #UX #ProductDesign #UXPortfolio

What comes to your mind when an interviewer asks you to describe a "problem" you solved? For most UXers it has to do with a usability pain point. That's not a bad thing, we are expected to advocate for our users after all. But it isn't usually what an interviewer is asking or what they're looking for in a case study. (Especially if you're speaking with a product leader). Do you want your case study or interview answers to be more impactful & successful? Then shift your thinking slightly to think of "problems", "situations", "outcomes", etc as including the business impact. That's the way everyone else in a business thinks so it will resonate more with them. Now, I'm definitely not saying to forget about user pain points. It's our job to resolve them and advocate for users. But a slight shift in how you speak about it could be helpful in grabbing your interviewer's attention. For example: Instead of "the dashboard widget builder component was hard to use", try something like: "PMs and Data Analysts were spending nearly 50% of their time helping users find data and create dashboards—a task users should have been able to do themselves. This resulted in lost productivity cost of $52 Million per year. Our task was to improve our users' ability to find the data & insights they needed on their own so we could reduce product consulting time of PMs below 20%." One good test of how you're doing is to ask your PM on the project to describe the problem you were solving, and see how close it is to your description. If it's way off, there may be an opportunity for revision. A problem description should include: user pain, company pain, and scale of the problem. Ideally it should also include why this was a problem worth prioritizing as well. P.S. This way of framing problems will also make you more impactful and successful in your CURRENT role as well. #InterviewTips #PortfolioDesign #UXDesign

In the past week, I've reviewed almost 400 applications for our Product Designer position at Heyo. Here's what stood out and helped candidates move to the interview phase: 1. Impressive Work: We’re looking for portfolio pieces that make us pause and think, "We want this in our portfolio." Your work should excite us and match the quality our clients expect. 2. Match Your Work to Our Quality: A tip I share with mentees is to screenshot a company’s portfolio and replace a few of their graphics with your work. Does it match their quality? If your work is within a 25% range of our current projects, I’m interested and see growth potential. If it’s better, heck yes, now I’m excited to see if you can raise our bar. 3. Show End Results First: Start with the final product. I appreciate detailed case studies, but show the goods up front. Make me want to scroll through the rest of your work, not feel obligated. 4. Prune Your Portfolio: Remove weaker projects to raise the "average score" we may rate your portfolio. Ask friends for honest feedback. A streamlined portfolio of strong work can transform your presentation. 5. Show the Work Clearly: Ensure your portfolio has relevant preview images. If I don't see exciting work immediately (or the image doesn't pertain to your project), I might not click through to the case study. 6. Optimize Your Site: Slow sites with heavy animations are frustrating. Make sure your portfolio loads quickly and is easy to navigate. 7. Understand the Role: Tailor your application to the type of business and role. For agencies like ours, a balanced UI/UX skillset is crucial due to quick project turnarounds. In full transparency, I've reviewed a lot of UX heavy applicants that are missing the UI skillset as well. Additional Advice: Follow Application Instructions: Apply through the job posting. Direct messages with your portfolio and CV can get lost in the shuffle. Don’t Request Calls Without Context: I’m balancing my regular workload and reviewing applications. If you want to chat, send your work first. This isn't going to skip you to an interview. Timing for Networking: I’m open to talking shop and discussing design, but during hiring seasons, it’s best to connect after things calm down. If you're interested in the Product Designer, Motion Designer, or upcoming Developer roles we'll be posting this week, you can apply at https://heyo.is/growing and subscribe to be alerted for future opportunities with us. #Design #JobSearch #Hiring #CareerAdvice #ProductDesign #PortfolioTips #ProductDesigner

After many, I mean many, iterations of my portfolio I started to notice the importance of making them flow like a narrative, rather than a checklist. Even more so, I realized that my case studies should not just be the play by play of the all the steps I took to complete the project. Instead, that there were two stories at play. One was that of the play by play. Think me retelling everything I did and what went on to complete the project. The other, is that of the case study. The difference? The case study one should only share out the vital pieces that will help your reader to understand your process and how you think. So you are probably asking, how do I figure that one out? Well, I can help you with that! That is why I created my UX Portfolio Sandwich Model. It’s a list of steps with questions that help you figure out this difference. It’s important for 3 reasons 1️⃣ It helps you find the important deliverables to add 2️⃣ Creates a case study that is shorter in length so helps your Hiring Managers who have no time see more 3️⃣ Allows for more transitions between steps to create a more engaging narrative

Creating a portfolio is notoriously a pain. 😄 Designers already have so much on their plate and on top of that we have to track all of our work and regularly update our portfolios so that it represents our abilities accurately. The more your focused on having a real impact at work, the less focus you put on documenting and updating your work. Let’s be real designers are busy. We’re in meetings and we’re executing on IC work. So here are 3 tips to make it easy for you: 1. Document everything like a mad person. Have really good Project kickoff documents, design docs, comments, and even annotate in Figma on why you made certain decisions. This way when you “forget” to closely document your process for your portfolio, it’s already a part of your workflow that you can go back to with minimal effort. 2. Start with an outline that tells the story of your case study. Give us the background (high level), see my previous post on not oversharing. 😉 Tell us about the challenges that you faced and bring us to the climax, how did you overcome that challenge and ultimately close out the project. Think of a pixar movie plot. You can achieve breadth and depth. 3. Make it skimmable and easy to navigate. 🎯 This means show images, brainstorming in Figjam, user flows, sketches, high fidelity work, gifs, etc. This along with clear, descriptive headlines helps people scan your portfolio and get a quick understanding of whether or not they want to read deeper into it. If you need help creating your portfolio, The Craft has a resource written by me, I’ll link it below. Drop any questions for me in the comments.

As a mentor on ADPList_dot_org, in the last 6 months, I have reviewed about 40 portfolios (both UX Designers and UX Researchers). Yes that’s a lot of 1:1 sessions each week 🙂 Reviewed several portfolios that were well formatted, easy to scan and the right amount of details. Really good work. ✅ On the other hand, some portfolios needed a lot of improvement. Common struggle: “what amount of details is right?”. My general solution is to use an analogy: “Think of your online portfolio as a movie trailer” 🎥 A movie director spends 5 or more years working on a movie script, selecting actors, financing, shooting the movie, editing and much more. Yet at the end, they have to put that entire years worth of effort in a “15 second” or “30 second” movie trailer. I have never directed a movie, but I assume it’s hard to decide what goes in that trailer. The purpose of the trailer is to get people excited to watch the entire movie. Similarly, I think, the purpose of an online portfolio is to get HR / Hiring Managers excited to talk to you. 📲 The portfolio needs to be conceptually similar to a 30 second sleek trailer version of you & your work. I am not suggesting a video, but something that can be scanned in a few seconds to know if its a likely match for the job requirement. Of course for the detailed interview you will need the full movie version of your case studies. Most days, I make a high level judgement of the “quality” of the portfolio in the first 5-10-15 seconds. I might not be an outlier since many hiring managers I know have reported scanning resumes and portfolios for a few seconds before deciding if they should spend time looking through the details. I would love to 🙉 *hear your thoughts* 💭 on the analogy above (Trailer). Would be great if you can share your recommendations, comments with the community to help them improve their portfolios. ⏺ #ux #portfolio #design #research

How do you quantify your impact when writing your resume and UX case studies? How do you talk about results if your work didn't generate $1M in new revenue, the project didn't launch or got cut, or you don't work there anymore and can't get data? Quantifying your impact isn't just about a big "wow" factor stat like revenue generated, money saved, users acquired, etc. Instead of focusing on the outcome, you could bring attention to the SCOPE of the work you did. Here's what that might look like ... Let's say you did UX research, but the resulting product didn't launch. Instead, you could highlight the scope of the research you did through things such as: # of research participants # hours of research conducted # of data points collected or coded This context matters! It's shocking how many candidates don't talk about the scope of their work. Doing a research project with 1,000 participants is far different than with 10. But I won't know that if you don't tell me. Quantify what you did, and when possible, the results if you have them 😉 #uxresearch #uxdesigner #uxportfolio #uxdesign #userexperience