If you’re struggling with the tribulations of your first portfolio, or simply want to improve your existing one, here are some (free) websites that can help.
When I first started working on my UX portfolio, I felt one thing: overwhelmed. Starting your career as a designer of any discipline can feel like entering a very crowded room. Here, a well-built portfolio is your only ticket to standing out from a sea of talented individuals. Getting it right is no easy task, but thankfully there are some tools to help you.
If you’re just starting out, these articles can give you a foolproof structure for presenting your projects:
Once you’ve got to grips with the basic foundations, you’ll want to start thinking about the content. If this is your first portfolio, the likelihood is that you don’t have a wealth of hands-on experience in the industry. Or, perhaps you have a lot of experience, but it can’t be shared, or maybe it isn’t relevant to your UX career. If this is the case, you’ll need to start thinking about Case Studies to work on. These are a great way of showcasing your UX skills if you’re bound by any of these constraints. However, they aren’t an easy task. Worry not — I’ve found 10 websites that can help, with examples of how they can translate into your portfolio.
Portfolio design inspiration.
Websites:
A great place to start is to figure out how you want it to look and behave. It may seem like putting the cart before the horse, but having a well-designed portfolio is a great way of showing off your skills (and a badly designed one will do more damage than you think). Creating a website is, in my book, the best option; it’s dynamic, interactive, and can be easily shared with others. You can even treat this as a Case Study in itself — you should spend time gathering inspiration, drawing up some wireframes, and figuring out your site structure. We need to prioritise the user experience of people engaging with our portfolio; after all, these are the people that could be hiring us. The websites listed above contain a ton of great portfolio examples of designers that are at the top of their game.
If you’re going down the website route, Wix, WordPress, and Webflow are great web development services for those of us that don’t have the time or know-how to code our own.
Improving the UX of existing applications.
Websites:
One approach to a Case Study is taking an existing product and making it better. This is one of the more straightforward approaches; since you’re working on an actual product, you can align the changes with the goals of the business. You can also more easily understand who the users are, and what they might want. Working on a real product is also a great way of showing how your skills could be transferred to a different project, since your designs are more likely to solve an actual problem.
These websites provide free access to different journeys within a variety of popular apps and sites. You could, for example, take an onboarding flow, and make it your objective to increase the rate of conversion for registered users. Or you could improve the checkout flow of a shopping app. The options are pretty much endless!
Case study ideas and design prompts.
Websites:
Supposing you don’t want to take the first approach, there are plenty of great websites that provide real-world design prompts. These can give you the freedom to unleash your creativity while still working within a brief.
Figtut is a favourite of mine because it grounds your project in something that is helpful to the user and achieves business objectives. Many design prompt websites generate boundless, aspirational projects that simply don’t feel real, and aren’t reflective of anything you would actually do within a design job. Your portfolio should showcase skills that can be applied in the real world, so taking on a challenge that has some constraints is a great option.
Nailing your user flows.
Website:
This really is a hidden gem of a website and one I wish I’d discovered earlier. It provides a comprehensive checklist of the recommended UI elements and screens for a range of different pages and platforms, making it 10x easier to create the perfect user flow. I’m not suggesting that you take these guidelines as gospel — instead, use them as a foundation to innovate an amazing user experience.
UX laws and usability heuristics.
Websites:
As a UX Designer, understanding the basic laws and heuristics of user experience is an important foundation for creating great designs — and one you shouldn’t ignore. These two websites are pretty much the holy grail for anyone in UX, and it’s vital that you spend some time getting to grips with the most important theories. The Aesthetic Usability Effect and Jakob’s Law are two laws that I reference frequently and are relevant in a multitude of projects. Furthermore, NN Group’s 10 Usability Heuristics can be used as a checklist, both for assessing the value of your own designs and for proposing potential pain points in existing products.
When you’re working under time constraints, or are working on your own personal project, finding the time or resources to conduct real user testing can be difficult. There is real data backing these theories, so instead of making assumptions, use these to give reason to your proposed solutions. Guesswork is the enemy of good UX, but there is a way around it.
Good luck!
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