How can you showcase your design process in a UI design portfolio?

It's about highlighting diversity, skills, and personal flair while considering the preferences of your target audience. Aim for a well-rounded showcase that encompasses various UI design types and emphasizes the depth and impact of your work.

What on earth is a UI portfolio? Are there any designers out there who only do UI? Clearly this was not a real person's question. 0.o

Context is key! If its live work, show the overall process of how you were able to achieve success with the project (ideally, how did designers and collaborators come to this conclusion?). Highlight user flows and at least a high-level overview of the project with just enough detail so the audience isnt lost in screens/visual design.

I agree that you should target your desired sector or company you want to work for. Also, emphasize your skillset and experiences in your portfolio. Display your strength in your design process and let your passion for user-centric design methods be known.

Answering the "what" and "why" is like giving your designs a voice. The "what" explains the problems you were presented with and your understanding of them. The "why," sheds light on why you chose the solution you did. It's not just about looking good; it's about making choices that make sense. A killer UI portfolio doesn't just showcase skills; it shouts, "I get it!" to future employers or clients. It's the difference between cool visuals and designs that hit the sweet spot of user needs and business goals.

By this stage, you'd always have a clear Problem statement and obviously final solution in front of you. The challenge here is to brief the process you went through to solve the problem and what were the stakeholders/client needs were. Once the process is explained perfectly, you can utilize screenshots, mockups, or prototypes to present your final look of the solution and bring your projects to life. Make sure to keep the look and feel of the entire portfolio consistent.

Ask yourself, "What are we solving here? How is this product going to fix that?" You can hone in on what problem you are solving by conducting user research. Highlight feedback from these interviews and take note of what frustrations/goals are vocalized. Once you gather enough information through user studies, you can gauge what issues need fixing based on the commonalities of these responses. Without proper research, our own biases can overshadow the distinction between creating solutions aligned with user needs and designing based solely on our preferences.

To showcase your design process in a UI design portfolio: Project Overview: Start with a brief project introduction. Research: Highlight user research, personas, and problem statements. Ideation: Present sketches, wireframes, and initial concepts. Prototyping: Showcase interactive prototypes or mockups. Usability Testing: Mention user testing and feedback. Visual Design: Display final designs with attention to aesthetics. Iterations: Show how you refined designs based on feedback. Final Deliverables: Include all assets, style guides, and specifications. Impact: Share project outcomes and key takeaways. Process Description: Explain your role and contributions.

Conducting thorough research and competitor analysis is very integral in any design process. You go through and study user needs, market trends, and see what competitors are doing in this regard. So all of this research process provides a lot of help in design decisions. So do explain this phase of the process but with very key highlights of your research process in the portfolio. The process should be clear so that the the reader would easily understand the whole story of the project like what were the pain points, and how you solved them.

Take your audience through your design process – reveal the brainstorming sessions, the sketches that brought ideas to life, and the wireframes or prototypes that shaped the solution. Transparency is key; don't shy away from illustrating how you embraced feedback and criticism, turning them into actions for improvement. Your portfolio is not just a showcase of polished designs; it's a narrative of growth, adaptation, and resilience in the face of evolving project requirements.

Design is not the straightforward thing that every solution would work for all projects. Meaning you might come up with something that's not going to work perfectly in all use cases. So you can always show your main design iterations and also key feedback on why one solution was preferred over the other. Don't complicate just talk about the main key design directions that worked for your project and align with stakeholder needs.

You'll want to continue improving your portfolio as you gain more experience and knowledge about its structure. However, take every piece of feedback with a grain of salt because you know your work better than anyone else. Not all feedback may align with your style or how you choose to display your work. As designers, it's important to be clear in our presentations while also showcasing our uniqueness through our portfolios.

I have had the opportunity to see several designers presenting their projects during interviews. One of the problems I have seen more commonly is that most of them start showing screens with designs without taking the time to explain to the audience what the product is about, who the primary users are, and why that product is essential. Many designers are trapped by the cognitive bias called "the curse of knowledge," where they assume that their audience knows as much or even more about the product the designer worked for. Before you show any design, briefly describe the primary purpose of the product you helped design, then move to your user, followed by the specific problem you tried to solve.