Reviewing UX Design portfolios

We're hiring. That is exciting. And we asked you to provide a portfolio with your application, didn’t we? It’s a hot topic and I felt the need to explain why we are asking for this. Laerdal Medical get many applicants whenever we go into the market to hire a new designer. We simply cannot talk with everyone, so we have to choose someone based on their application. And to be able to make a choice we need something to evaluate. Your CV says nothing about what is important to you, how you work or who you are. The cover letter can cover some of this, but the quality of cover letters is absurdly varied, and we’ve seen designer with a fantastic cover letter, but have nothing to back it up with. You can’t just tell; you need to show too. Plus, its very time consuming to read hundreds of cover letters that we don’t actually really trust. But with a portfolio we can easily see if you have the hard skills in place, a hint at your soft skills and hopefully we get to know you a little bit too.

As a general rule; don't take my advice. Do your own thing. The most important thing about your portfolio is that it is yours. Show us what you want us to see. Every company will be different in what they look for. Even within a company they might look for different things depending on the position. No portfolio can, or should, show everything you do. But there is only one you. Own it.

So, having said that. I have a clear preference when I review portfolios. This is unique to me, others will look for other things. Again; Do your thing. But since I've been asked so many times what I am looking for, I've written it down here:

You know your users don’t read, well I don’t either

Spoiler alert: I’m not going to read every word in your portfolio. I will skim the first 2-3 cases and I might skip the rest, depending on how interesting the first ones are. I assume the stuff you are most proud of is shown off first. Also; you're fine with just one good case. No need to have many, they won't be read anyway... You can easily convince me to have a chat with you with one solid case. Wordy portfolios will not be read. If you want me read something, you can link to an article you’ve written and if the portfolio/profile is interesting, I might give that a spin. Keep it short. Show off your UX writing skills. Know your reader. Tell me what is important and forget the rest. It seems a lot of designers treat their portfolios as archives. Those are two very different things in my view. Focus on scrollytelling, not storytelling. You can tell us the full story in the interview. Get to the meat fast; what problem are you solving, what was interesting/useful when solving it, prove that you solved it and how you iterated on it.

Remember, you are one amongst many. Let’s say we get 100 applicants for a position. If I spend 5 minutes reviewing each, that’s at least two workdays of just reviews. And that is when I spend only 5 minutes on each… So, what am I looking for in those 5 minutes?

Process, not results

I don’t give a shit about the stuff you’ve made, or the companies you’ve work for, but I care about how you make things. Your process scales, the end product does not. Whatever you have made before is not what you will make for us, so it’s not very interesting to me. But how you made it, is very interesting! Because that is how you will make things for us as well. Show me what is important to you in product development. The stuff that you are proud of. I don’t care if you talked with 4 or 40 users, I won't judge your process, but I want to hear your reflections on it. There’s no need to explain too much, we are familiar with the design process, but we do not know which parts you like the most, are best at, worst at etc. Give me highlights! This is not an academic essay, you are trying to convince me to interview you. Too much context can also be hurtful, but luckily this is at the core of being a good designer. Make a product that solves a need, and the need for you portfolio is to create interest in talking more with you. And focus on the U in UX. Showing me tons of screenshots won't help me. I am not the user of your product. Tell me how you've solved a problem for the user.

The best designer in the world

Almost all portfolios are made by the best designer in the world, at least according to themselves. It’s amazing to me how many case studies I’ve read where the designer got a hole in one, slam dunk, absolutely nailed it on their first try, like a North Korean dictator. No mistakes were made. No lessons learned. Just the best designer in the world doing the best work. Well, I don’t believe it. And even if it was true, then you are certainly not the best designer in the world. Show me something you learned. Show me a crossroads you were at, and you took a choice, and explain that choice. Show me how you use data to inform your decisions. Show me how you took a risk and it failed. Show me how you didn’t take a risk and it failed. Anything is interesting as long as you can reflect on it, and learn from it. There’s no need to explain the whole process. Show me a highlight that was useful to you.

Impact and iterations

Here's some tough questions: What value do you provide to the team and to the product? And can you prove it? Have you designed with the intent of iterating on your design? Did you work closely with developers to make sure you got the data you needed to prove the effect of what you were doing? What did you learn about the impact of your design? A negative impact is a great opportunity to learn, and should not be hidden. How do you use quantitative and qualitative data to inform your decisions as a designer? I want to see that you are thinking in iterations, and setting yourself up for learning the important stuff, whatever that might be in your case, to make the next iteration better. I don't really care about your outputs, but I would love to hear about your outcomes. You being able to learn and change something is far more important to me than whatever you actually made. Outcomes over outputs. Design is never a one and done. Show me how you implement that in your designs. If your portfolio is not showing iterations and mistakes, you are hiding something.

Who are you?

I believe it is impossible to not bring your personality to work, so it matters. When I review portfolios I cannot remember all of them, but I always remember those who tell me something about themselves. It can be small, quirky things, but giving a little hint at who you are makes it a lot easier to reference and remember you. “The cat loving person”, “the person who had Beyonce references in all their examples”, “the person that made a thing for their sick grandma” are infinitely easier to distinguish than “the person who was very good at Figma”, “the person who evaluated themselves to 4 out of 5 stars at user interviews” or “the figma-champion”. Show me a little bit of your personality. I will get to know it eventually anyway, so let’s start now! We’re also going to dive into your weaknesses and not-so-strong-points, so you might as well show me that now.

Rules, not tools

What tools you use is not very interesting to me. If you know XD, you will learn Figma quickly. If you are not so good in Figma, we can send you on a course and you will learn it quickly. The rules you have set for yourself is far more interesting than the tools you use. We use many tools, each for their own purpose. They are modern and simple. Your thought pattern and process is much more interesting than what tools you use. We will very quickly see what level your hard skills are at, and we believe you should be able to replicate that skill set in any of the modern tools.

PDFs

You're applying for a job as a UX designer. If your portfolio is a PDF, that tells me something. Having your own website is a great way to show your skills and priorities. With modern tools anyone can make anything on the web. It's just pictures and text and navigation. You get to play all the roles and decide everything yourself. That's a great way for us to see what matters to you. A PDF is not wrong, but it's a format meant for print, and your job is to build apps or websites. PDFs are a missed opportunity for you to show us what you got. But don't get me wrong, we've hired people with PDF portfolios before, but we prefer to navigate a website and learn about you that way.

Team work makes the dream work

I’ve interviewed designers with very impressive portfolios and when we talk I learn that the impressive parts where done by other team members. Just be honest about what you have done. We all work in teams. Nothing good has been made by a one-person-team. And you will work in cross functional teams at Laerdal as well. But don’t hide or lie about your contribution to the products you’ve been a part of.?It's ok that you didn't do it all. We don't expect you to.

Presenting

If you get an interview, you'll be expected to present something. This is where your storytelling skills can shine: introduce the character (you), set the scene (the organization, the need, problem space, your team), the conflict (the problems you worked on) and the resolution (the solution and what you learned). In the interview you can expect that we have browsed your cases, so no need to repeat that. Tell us a personal story from your journey with that case. What happened that was very important to you? What did you learn? How did you learn it? What data did you use? There's no need to cram everything in there. The story is better if it's short and concise. If there's a skill we need to hear about that you didn't mention, we will ask you about it. Try your best to leave us intrigued and inspired after your presentation.

I look forward to reviewing your portfolio!