December Product Design Recap

This recap is fully about product design portfolio and things we should avoid to use (like multiple senseless UX artefacts or even wireframes). Learn practical tips how to craft your next-level product design portfolio with outstanding case studies.

The evolution of product design portfolio

I want to kick off this week with some thoughts about the product design portfolio and how it might evolve within your career.

The notes below are based on my experience and portfolio changes, but I guess you can find familiar patterns.

Stage 0?? – No portfolio

We all started from scratch. And it’s absolutely fine! I had this stage, too, when there was no portfolio. I used to be a graphic designer and had my projects (they actually were just images) on my computer without any structure. Very soon I realised that it didn’t work.

Stage 1?? – Portfolio in PDF

The next stage for me was a PDF file with my projects. I used this structure for my graphic design portfolio and later kept it for my UX/UI one. It worked pretty well because I could highlight the cases I wanted to show (I packed them into a comprehensive story).Nowadays, some senior designers use PDF portfolios, which works for them. And this is cool because it shows us the power of storytelling when the tools don’t matter ??

Stage 2?? – Notion

When I had been working as a product designer for a couple of years, I realised that to cover my product design case studies with all the processes, UX artefacts, UI designs, and outcomes – a PDF is not a good structure because it took up to 5-7 pages per case. For 4 cases in the portfolio, there were ~25 pages ??So, I moved my portfolio to Notion, which is an extremely easy-to-use tool. Everything was so smooth, and I was inspired by the tool, which helped me craft my portfolio even better.

Stage 3?? – Website

When I became a senior/lead level designer, I realised that Notion doesn’t work as it should. Because the more experienced roles you’re looking for, the better you need to present yourself. And sometimes it’s hard to perform without a personal site. For me, it sounds like the industry rules we have to play by. I don’t think designers must pay for the domains and hosting to find a job every 2-3 years. But this is a reality, and the level of requirements for designers with 5+ years of experience is much higher ??

So, I moved my portfolio to a standalone website using Framer. And this was a good decision. It's easy to create, easy to maintain, and easy to share.

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Storytelling in your portfolio

What is comprehensive storytelling in your portfolio should look like? This is one of the questions I’ve been asked often as a mentor on adplist.org. And here are my thoughts on this ↓

• Imagine that you’re presenting your case study in front of a big audience. How can you make it memorable, engaging, and impactful?
• Don’t use tons of text. Honestly, no one will read it. Make it as short as possible, still highlighting the main details, insights, data, and metrics.
• Don’t make it plain and boring. People usually scroll through our case studies, so try to attract their attention to the essential things. Use images, text formatting, and experiment with graphics.
• Show your own design process. Every framework designers adopt will not work ideally as described in the books. Show how it worked explicitly for you and your project.

That’s it! Don’t overcomplicate it. People are already surrounded by a lot of complex stuff. Simplicity in your storytelling will help you succeed ??

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Portfolio structure

Okay, we already know that the storytelling in your product design portfolio is crucial. And I’ll repeat it many-many times. But what about the structure?

This is the foundation your case study should include:

1?? The problem → the main thing in your portfolio and your product design job.

2?? The Process → can vary depending on the problem, context, product, etc. Include your research insights, diagrams, analysis, and so on.

3?? Final designs → don’t be shy about showing how good your final designs are. Zoom in on details and zoom out to a broad view. Make it shine and remarkable.

4??Outcomes → results, learnings, next steps, etc. No need to include everything. Just those things that were relevant to your case.

Consider this as a skeleton of your case study. People looking through your portfolio should easily find that. But it’s not over. On top of it, you should add your design process, obstacles, mistakes, and all the things that make your process unique and specific to a particular problem you’re solving. Try to stand out!

That’s it! Don’t overcomplicate it. People are already surrounded by a lot of complex stuff. Simplicity and storytelling will help you succeed ??

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Stop using every possible UX artefact in your portfolio

Designers, please, I’m begging you, don’t create every possible UX artefact for your portfolio case study ????

This is not how things work in reality. Working in product teams, squads or tribes, we never create everything.

And the truth is that we never need everything. By UX artefacts, I mean different research methods, diagrams, CJMs, JBTDs, User Flows, stakeholders maps, etc.

Example 1: If you have a basic problem where you need to fix a gap in missing functionality, e.g. users can export files in jpeg, but you have their feedback that png is required.

Solution: to solve this, you don’t need to create CJM, or you don’t need a stakeholder management map. You need to solve the problem with the correct format, that’s it.

Example 2: The conversion rate from the landing page into a loan application is very low. We need to improve it.

Solution: to tackle this problem, you need something like a UX audit of the existing landing page, some customer feedback, and probably a CJM to have an overview of the whole funnel. Does the customer journey start with a landing page? What do we have before? Are there any pain points there? How do customers discover this landing page? And so on.

Example 3: There is a niche to launch a product to create interfaces faster with the help of AI. But we have zero data or research.

Solution: to solve this, you most likely need a lot of UX artefacts. Personas or JTBDs to better understand the audience and who they are, stakeholder management map to understand why the business wants to invest in this, different diagrams, plans, etc.

So please consider the problems you’re trying to solve before adding every single UX artefact in the world.

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Who are the customers of design portfolio?

As product designers, we always think about our users or customers. And it totally makes sense. But why don't we think about users when crafting our own portfolios?

It's yet another common mistake. Often, product designers are too busy to consider their own portfolios as products. And this is tricky because our portfolios also have their target audience.

Recruiters and hiring managers are two main groups of our users. And to craft a successful portfolio that will get us a job (the main reason for portfolios existence), we need to understand our user jobs.

Recruiter jobs:

1. Identify relevant experience and skills in a design portfolio.
2. Match the skills with a job description.These are the main jobs, but of course, there can be more.

Hiring manager jobs:

1. Match the skills with a job description and a particular team they’re looking for a designer at.
2. Understand the design process through the case studies.
3. Understand the main product design skills like problem-solving, UX research, design craft, visual skills, etc.
4. Find any other skills or expertise that can be relevant to the role.

And again, these are just high-level jobs. They can vary based on the company and specific position.

When we consider our target audience, we switch on our empathy and think more about showing in portfolios precisely what our users (recruiters and hiring managers) expect to find there.

I remember when I realised it, I started to look at my portfolio from a new angle. And it inspired me not only to improve my case studies and overall portfolio structure but also to become a better designer who always thinks about users.

This is just a minor tip that can help to move your product design portfolio to a new level.

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Craft your portfolio as a public talk

Here is one more portfolio tip for product designers that helped me to create a better narrative and storytelling. The tip is simple and complex simultaneously: craft your case studies as public talks.

The most straightforward part of this is that it is so obvious. But I realised this only after I gave a couple of public talks and spent days preparing for them.

These are my points of preparing a good public talk:

• Share some intro or context
• Engage with the audience
• Make people listen to you and not get bored
• Add a challenge or even a pinch of drama
• Show how you solved the challenge or minimised the drama
• Share results, impact or conclusion

This all was challenging. But when you see how it works, you start to understand the main patterns of presenting and pitching for public speeches and, overall, for everything.

The same rules apply to your portfolio. Summarising them into one, I can say: just don’t make people get bored. Crafting this makes it easier to stand out and make a positive impression.

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No hi-fi wireframes

Hi-fidelity wireframes, in 90% of cases, are absolutely useless. Don’t make them an essential step of your design process. And definitely don’t create hi-fi wireframes for every screen you design.

Many product design courses teach us to create wireframes first and then paint them with colours and UI elements. It’s far from reality and how digital products should be created.First, it creates a strong distinction between UX and UI, which is wrong. UI is as important as UX. We can’t separate these things. Never. For instance, one of the UX laws is?the Aesthetic-Usability Effect.?It means that “users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable”.

Reference https://lnkd.in/eMHw4ct9

Wireframes have very special purposes. These can include:

1. Ideation. We can easily create many different options with pen and paper or in Figma (or anywhere else). These should be low-fidelity wireframes.
2. Quickly test an interaction design pattern or flow. Instead of polishing the final UI, we can just do it with black and white blocks.
3. Draft a complex flow to understand the system. And again, black and white blocks can save us a bunch of time.
4. Decide between multiple options. We can create wireframes of the needed screens faster to make a significant product decision.
5. Visualisation for presenting purposes, e.g. for stakeholders. But use this one very carefully. Because sometimes, to sell an idea, it’s better to show something closer to the final design, even if we change it later.

And finally, it’s very wrong to use hi-fi wireframes for usability tests. Because users don’t see a final UI, their actions can be different and sometimes even biased. The level of uncertainty with these tests is very high.

Feel free to agree or challenge these thoughts in the comments bellow.

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