When I wrote this article the first time I felt that the only thing lacking was some sketches, which have now been added. There is a small caveat when it comes to these minimal portfolios, for them to be effective the designer needs to have a good bit of work under their belt and products that have launched or have landing pages. When you’re on the hunt for your next UX role, your portfolio can make or break your chances of scoring an interview. Both of us have portfolios. One of my favorite focused portfolios comes from Anjana Menon, a senior UX writer at Spotify. I agree with Ash, I’ve been looking for something like this too. Enjoy. Quantifying specific outcomes adds weight and value to the projects, and the detail that he goes into with each case study is epic. Check out my quick update – http://an.thony.co.uk/google.html A sneak peek into the world of a Google Design test. Case studies are carefully mapped out from inception, through philosophy and research, to execution. I’m going to have to work REALLY hard and long to match them…however, I do wish people would get their portfolios proofread. I’ve been looking for something like this for a while! Some people argue that UX Designers shouldn’t build a portfolio. How to Develop Project Ideas for Your UX Portfolio, 9 Quick Tips from UX Portfolio Master Joe Natoli. 1). Look at this one http://www.uxconsult.com any feedback would be great. Inspiring.. found a interesting link. by Sarah Hawk, UX Mastery September 19, 2016. Christina’s portfolio is another that I came across by way of a community review request. This article first appeared on UX Mastery and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/career-tips/ux-design-portfolio-examples A great article, always nice to hear that people appreciate the effort involved and the actual process. I was immediately endeared by the way she tells her personal story just as one would document a design process. A curation of best portfolio websites, resumes, articles from UX/UI designers, graphic designers and motion designers. Hi! Justin’s portfolio is clean and unassuming. :), Hello, Thanks for posting. It’s your chance to present your work at its best and provide in-depth case studies that expose your creative process and reflect who you are as a designer. :), Hi Sarah, thank you so much for featuring my portfolio! Excellent, I’d love to see your process for other projects. All Rights Reserved. She is enthusiastic and passionate about User Experience and User Interface Design. Designer… Wow, I love all of these portfolios but Frances Tung’s is definitely my favorite! Community Manager for the SitePoint network for several years and then Head of Community at FeverBee, Hawk is now on the team that builds Discourse. Wow- They are inspiring! My only concern is that the page is one big image. We're a community of learners, practitioners, mentors and leaders with a common interest in UX and human-centred design. Her case studies focus on the design and graphics of her projects with brief, contextual descriptions that speak to her impact on the project. It’s no wonder he’s been snapped up by Uber. A UX portfolio is important because it shows employers how you built something, not what you built. Another amazing UX design portfolio comes from Bianca Salomon, product designer at Dockwa. She offers a simple site with only the essential interactions. Are you a member? John does a fantastic job of clearly documenting the problems, the processes and the outcomes in his portfolio. We know how important it is to... We're a community of learners, practitioners, mentors and design leaders with a common interest in user experience (UX) and human-centred design (HCD). As an employer, I may be beguiled by such a beautiful thing or I might ask: ‘great, but can you deal with difficult management, where is the evidence of extensive research, did you encounter significant problems in the project and how did you overcome them? There’s a real chicken-and-egg problem with getting hired as a designer these days: It’s hard to get a job without a good portfolio; It’s hard to create a good portfolio without … A UX designer portfolio is often an online website that uses advanced techniques to showcase all your UX design projects and documents, design experiences and contact information, etc. Learn about 5 common career paths in UX design along with their pros and cons. Every one of these UX portfolios does something very well, and it’s definitely an inspiring collection. PDF UX portfolios tend to showcase more in-depth detail about your UX case studies, which gives recruiters a better idea of how you solve design problems. Thanks Doug – it’s been a while since I came back to this one so I appreciate the nudge. The site is beautifully austere with no frills and no fluff. :). In our experience most UXers get their portfolio wrong: they approach it as a print designer or photographer would. Each product link leads to a page with similarly intriguing design touches. The simplicity of the portfolio allows his work to take center stage. As a new UX designer, it’s only natural that you won’t have vast quantities of work to show in your portfolio, so instead you need to find a unique angle to stand out. I don’t want to spoil the party, but while these portfolios are nice looking and you do allude to the need to narrate, in some way, what you did in a job, the focus seems to be on the attractiveness of the portfolio rather than its substance. Remember to streamline as much as possible and design for scanning, so that the person viewing your design portfolio stays interested and engaged all the way through. I’m not sure if that is something I should be worried about for my own. About to finish your portfolio and start applying for jobs, but don't have a design background? Long-form case study portfolios are an industry classic that we all know and love. I agree that Anthony Anderson did a great job outlining his UX process here: http://an.thony.co.uk/process.html. Your portfolio also requires a smooth flow, showing that you craft designs that are cohesive and easy to navigate. Annoyingly hard to build, ridiculously essential for getting a UX job. If … Where teams create the world’s best experiences at scale, powered by the leader in creative tools. His introduction is one of the most engaging I’ve encountered and every time I read it I wonder what it must be like to be on his team. :). I hope this has left you feeling inspired. https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/ux-portfolio-examples-inspiration These portfolios are some of the most inspiring and engaging because they are executed with precision and focus on one aspect of the design process. In order to help you solve such problems easily, here are 10 best inspiring UX design portfolio examples for you: 1. Where in the project did you learn the most? What are my chances of getting hired as a UX designer with no real-world experience? From awhile back but still worth a look. The UX portfolio website has superseded the business card as a UX designer’s most essential professional networking tool. Your attention is brought immediately to her work and she guides you through each project with a trimmed down case study focused on her contribution. It’s definitely nice to have an overview of things that work and can be improved upon, and having different examples in the same location. They allow us to fully demonstrate our design thinking and show off all our design artifacts. It’s about building the right kind of UX portfolio and being smart about it. More updates coming soon…. Isa Pinheiro, a senior designer at Hello Monday, has another inspiring portfolio. While case study portfolios are one of the most common forms of doing this, they are also the most difficult to do well because you have to make each part of your design process as clear and detailed as possible without going on for too long. Which artifacts gave you an “Aha!” moment? Getting personality in there is the key, because I imagine an employer going through the process of looking at a pile of portfolios needs something that sticks in the mind. In the years, I’ve written about how to quickly create a UX portfolio and how to create a content-first portfolio.I’ve even published a popular course on creating a UX portfolio… First and foremost, what makes a winning portfolio is the same thing behind a winning design: … Designers should absulutely be able to provide eveidence of their research and clearly explain the thought process behind every problem-solving decision undertaken. I’ve been doing UX for twelve years and a friend in the US twenty years. Hey Miral, You’re welcome. Portfolios remain important throughout your UX working life, by-the-way. Bret is a storyteller and a self-professed “purveyor of impossible dreams” and those traits are communicated perfectly through his portfolio. Working methods, best practices, tips and tricks, Unique insights, design stories, the impact of design, Industry leaders shaping the future of design, Inspiring Examples of UX Design Portfolios. Here are 10 inspiring UX portfolios. 1.1k. Specially seeing the variety, and uniqueness to each person’s personality! The process of creating a UX-design portfolio allows you to … These are essentially the, “I know who I am and what I want to do” portfolios, and they come from UX designers who have chosen a specific path. When you’re done with your portfolio, if you’d like some feedback, join us at community.uxmastery.com – we frequently help people out with reviews. Here’s How to Nail Your Interviews, The Biggest Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities in UX Design: Takeaways from Adobe MAX 2019. What are your chances? Her processes are laid out clearly and are well supported by imagery, and she injects just the right amount of personality into the portfolio. Get XD Ideas delivered weekly to your inbox. Simon Pan is a User Experience Designer based in Sydney. A few sites are down now, so I wanted to offer that up for iteration :). Together we share and help each other grow the skills needed for a successful career in the user experience profession. If it’s possible to avoid I would, but I don’t think it’s worth stressing over too much. As an employer, I can see this person can produce UX artefacts, but can they produce the goods? These portfolios have sleek, pared-down interfaces that link out to the designer’s body of work. A portfolio website is essentially a publicly accessible business card. My friend found it here and it was a pleasant surprise to see my work amongst some fantastic portfolios from other designers! Exploring this site is like spending time at a fun park – it’s absolutely delightful. I would also recommend looking at works of these agencies, really inspiring: http://turumburum.com/cases https://area17.com/work http://hellomonday.com/projects. If you want to create a UX/UI design portfolio that inspires, we invite you to learn more about our UX Academy program for career-changers and upskillers. They may not do everything right, but each of them does something very well. Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons licence. Summary: A portfolio highlighting your design process and past work shows others who you are as a designer. Hawk doesn’t agree. As design leads, we’ve seen hundreds of UX portfolios throughout our careers. UX should strive to remain as simple as possible. It’s the little things that make it stand out from the crowd. Simon’s portfolio takes the most comprehensively catalogued case studies award, hands down. :), You’re welcome Frances. I’m just starting out as a UX/UI designer and I will definitely be taking inspiration from the beautiful portfolios Sarah has so kindly shared with us. You’re welcome. She hits you immediately with a dramatic and simple interface. I love seeing people’s workflows and wireframes. Rather than focusing on laying out their design thinking in long, formulaic case studies, they instead focus on simplicity. Your homepage needs to show your strengths as a UX designer. Do you think that is a problem for a portfolio? We have a lot of discussions about UX portfolios in the UX Mastery community. I read this portfolio from end to end, just for pure enjoyment. It shows what you do, how you do it, and how well you can demonstrate it. Thank you for the research and post. Really nice roundup. With Nan’s portfolio, you feel like you’re being immersed into each project and you simply want to learn more about each product. Check this one: http://maciejkarpinski.com/, These portfolios are truly splendid! Additionally, you can tailor your PDF … Maybe employers are still in awe of UX despite, as I’ve found, they are still not always sure what it actually does. UX design is at a pivotal point in its development as an industry; never before have the contributions…. For portfolio inspiration, check out this curated list of amazing UX portfolios that cover the spectrum from traditional case study layouts to hyper-minimalistic designs. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Bret Victor. I found this very helpful :). Your job as a UX designer is to help people seamlessly experience a web design. This will be a continually updated list of UX Design Portfolios I admire.. Ah, the UX portfolio. One of my favorite portfolios in this style comes from Kyle Ribant, currently working for Airtable as a designer. uxbrain.com, Here’s how I resolved describing myself in portfolio: http://www.podorsky.cz. Ljubomir Bardžić wields UX design … Think of specialized motion designers, UX writers, or AR/VR designers; they work on teams with a variety of specialized designers and can focus highly on their discipline. A final thought: UX should be considered the meeting of the analytical and design. Danny recently transitioned from long-form case studies to the simplified portfolio. No problem Jennifer, I hope you found something inspirational in there. these are by far the most useless and outdated portfolios that I have seen. This means that the page is not responsive. Most employers aren’t likely to be doing portfolio research on their phones (although that is a personal opinion and not based on fact). Internships can be easier to land, but how you prepare & communicate your value is paramount. More From Medium 5 Student Design Portfolios … Research is analysed and from which comes tested conceptual designs. Personally, … What was the most crucial problem you attempted to solve? Bianca is a recent UX bootcamp grad who landed her first role in less than 2 months of graduating. If you’re struggling to find appropriate projects to include in your portfolio, or you need some tips about making yours stand out from the crowd, join our upcoming session on creating persuasive portfolios. This is a truly beautiful piece of the internet. He rocks in User Research, Information Architecture and Interaction Design for mobile and the web. The key to getting this type of portfolio right is to take a hard look at your process and focus on the most influential parts. A good What makes Yitong’s portfolio unique is the way he tells a story. When it comes to creating your portfolio, starting your designs in Adobe XD allows you to quickly create interactive portfolios that can be used for job hunting while you build out a site. She is always up for a word game, craft beer, or a knit-a-long. The process that Justin follows is described in depth and is backed up with great examples of imagery, giving a clear insight into the way he works. Her portfolio, design thinking, and grit have helped her succeed. Thanks for the review! You also have to be relatively sure that your resume and your work can and does speak for itself. However, as a designer with no professional experiences or a newbie in UX design, creating a perfect UX designer portfolio website is really not an easy task, right? This particular example is close to my heart because Gregor is a member of our UX Mastery community and his portfolio came to my attention when he asked for a review. A rising trend in the UX portfolio world is the ultra-minimalism seen from some senior designers. Beta Takaki is a UX & UI designer based in Vancouver. UX Mastery is an approved Educational Partner of the Interaction Design Foundation, the world’s largest UX Design learning community. This means you shouldn’t dive straight into building out your website on Webflow or Squarespace, unless you are a website building pro. Each project page has its own look and feels customized to the product and the case studies are balanced with text and imagery. Together we share and help each other grow the skills needed for a successful career in the user experience profession. I completely agree with you. However, I will make sure to address the issues you’ve brought up. This way, by the time you start building the website, you know exactly what you want, where you want it, and how you want it to behave. UX Design Portfolio 2020 UX Designer Portfolio . Hey Sarah Thanks for including me on this list! And the team at UXPin – the UX design app – have scoured the internet for some of the best examples that illustrate these points below. Here, I’ve compiled a shortlist of some UX design portfolios that I found inspiring, along with some tips to help you show off your work in the best way possible. http://community.uxmastery.com/. The best approach to creating a stunning portfolio is to blend strategy and design into an iterative process, just like you do in every project you work on. You can get to know Bianca better at the Adobe Career Bootcamp, a pre-Adobe MAX day of inspiration and networking, where she will be a panelist sharing her experiences in the UX design world. It’s clean, easy to digest, and very clearly shows you what she brings to each project. Thanks for posting Hawk! A UX portfolio is a must for any designer in the industry. As a UX designer, your portfolio is your business card. Thanks for your comment. Free. Another inspiring minimalistic portfolio comes from Daniel Rodriguez, aka Danny from Miami,  who works for Facebook as a product designer in AR/VR. It isn’t flashy because it’s all about showcasing his work. Thanks for this Hawk! Building a portfolio can be daunting if you’re relatively new on the UX scene, so a while back I went hunting for examples that I think are inspiring for one reason or another. Great inspiration on the ones that are up! I was amazed with all the different styles. His site is clean, easy to navigate, and full of personality. These portfolios can inspire us to find ways to trim out unnecessary details and bring more of ourselves into our case studies. Isa is clearly a designer, through and through, and she makes that abundantly clear through her portfolio. Curating, designing & building a UX Portfolio is no easy task, so whether you’re UX Student, a seasoned User Experience Designer looking for inspiration, or a recruiter seeking out … They range from debates over whether or not portfolios are important, to requests for feedback on portfolios-in-progress, and most frequently – how to find appropriate projects when you’re yet to get a job. Adobe Spectrum is the design system that fuels Adobe’s creative tools and brings rigor to product design. I’m Helen. For most designers, getting started on your portfolio is the biggest challenge and, for many of us, the best way to jump that hurdle is to get some inspiration from other designers. More From Medium 5 Student Design Portfolios … This portfolio is UI focused, if you want to see a … Instead, start with a concept sketch to hone in on how you want your portfolio to look, then move into mid-fidelity to refine your layout, and finally move into high-fidelity adding your color palette and visual elements. Another example of an interesting portfolio, and this is how you document a UX process. Joe Natoli discusses in his... As an aspiring UX designer, you probably have tons of great ideas that you want to turn into fully-designed portfolio projects. This type of UX portfolio is for designers who know exactly what they want to do and have chosen to focus their attention, skills, and energy in that direction. So there you go. Thanks! Yet the most successful contract I did involved a team of just six people doing rapid (but extensive) research, conceptual design and testing without doing embellished UX. Bianca has a passion for clean lines and simplicity that is evident in her UX design portfolio. He has created a stunning interface with subtle color transitions, simple interactions, and just a hint of intrigue. I would like to read about your personal experiences in this transformation in upcoming blog posts. The greatest thing about it is that you can tell a lot more about your story and your work on your portfolio. The site feels like a game, full of little gems of enjoyable reading, but most importantly, he communicates his design process in a comprehensive and easy to follow way. I particularly love the cute way the processes are annotated. These were dauntingly good! Now, let’s dive into a few common UX portfolio styles and some inspiring designers who have put them into practice. Here they are, in no particular order. I’m a UI/UX Designer who cares about both user and business side of products, thus ensures that needs of both are met. It aims to heal… designer. Hi Christina, In the case of a portfolio, I don’t think it’s a huge deal. Too many grammatical and spelling errors for this ex-editor! Great insight, Stuart! Get 3 months of free membership to learn UX Design ». UX is the abbreviation of User Experience and refers to an individual’s thoughts and feelings when using a specific product or a service. While focused portfolios are best used for specialized roles, we can learn a lot from the way these designers strip down their case studies to focus on the most essential and relevant details. The issue vexing me right now is how to sell the story of experience, about doing difficult research and conveying these achievements. If you’re interested in my journey (and others) we chat about that sort of thing a lot on our forums. Thank you for putting this together! Anthony’s site is a little confusing and hard to navigate at times, but once you get down to the documentation of his case studies, it’s pure gold. 31.6k Add to that some beautiful imagery and he’s onto a winning formula. Formerly a developer in the corporate world, our Community Manager Hawk (who is a Kiwi and is actually only called Sarah by her mother) said goodbye to the code and succumbed to the lure of social science. I love the simplicity of the design of this site, but more importantly look at these case studies! Creating a portfolio is a daunting task, luckily we are all part of a global design community from whom we can learn and draw inspiration. Hey Nicolas, Great job. Kathryn is a creative UX writer for Safrapay US. This may be heretical, but as UX spins faster and faster and more ‘UX things’ are invented so the suspicion grows that it is self-inflating and reducing it’s ROI – a big selling point of UX. From his personal journey to his work, the communication is structured and easy to follow. It is even more so for a UX What is UX? I love the level of detail that you go into, esp in describing your process. It’s fair to say, there isn’t much to criticise! Privacy policy     Terms and conditions     Corrections        Copyright 2012-2021 UX Mastery, A Collaborative UX Project: The Power of Community, Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, Exclusive Black Friday offers for UX professionals in 2020, Review: ‘Figure it Out: Getting from Information to Understanding’, Review: UX Accelerator online course by PeakXD, The Ethical Considerations, Trust, and Responsibility in Designing Voice UI. A curation of best portfolio websites, resumes, articles from UX/UI designers, graphic designers and motion designers. Nan Wang, senior UX designer at Rokid Inc., does an amazing job at this – of balancing the needs of a case study portfolio. Beyond creating an engaging single-page portfolio, he has curated his projects to demonstrate cohesion in style and execution. A designer’s portfolio must be personal, fun, and engaging. That’s why we made it our mission to help UX professionals - like you - build meaningful UX portfolios … And if you want to land that dream job, you’re going to need to put in some extra work to … UX is rapidly off-loading ‘lean’ as a mantra it seems as yet more UX artefacts, sometimes of dubious value, are added to the pot. She fully details her design thinking and shows all of her artifacts in a tidy layout that makes it easy to scan. User Experience design … When she isn’t writing or doing research, she spends her time watching sunsets and planning for her next thru-hike. Copyright © 2019-2021 Adobe. If there are others that you think are less useless and outdated, then by all means let us know and we’ll take a look. Expert UX designer Andy Budd says, “The best UX portfolios tell the story of a project, including the decisions you made, and why you made them, rather than just showing … It is indeed inspiring and so is your transformation from code{r} to current profession. To achieve this I apply analytical thinking, user research and evaluation methods, create UI using design … Frances’ fun, magazine/blog style approach to her portfolio adds delight to the experience, but it’s the way she crafts her case-studies as stories that had me hooked. Her processes are laid out clearly and are well supported by imagery, and she injects just the right amount of personality into the portfolio. Love your work. The general consensus is that a portfolio does help in the quest for that elusive first (and even second or third) job, but it’s important to remember that the purpose of the document isn’t to demonstrate your amazing visual design skills – the UX portfolio is all about documenting your process. Frances Tung’s UX portfolio Frances’ fun, magazine/blog style approach to her portfolio adds delight to the experience, but it’s the way she crafts her case-studies as stories that had me hooked. Some of those sites are now gone, so I’ve recently been on a new hunt – here are some updated examples that I love. No problem Ashlea, I enjoyed doing the research. Applying for Design Internships? By the end, you’ll have completed over 100 hands-on exercises, and built a portfolio … Pro Tip: Bianca designed her entire portfolio in Adobe XD before building it out in Webflow. When it comes to documenting his projects, I particularly like the way he progresses in a linear fashion from the initial challenge, through his process, culminating finally in learnings. 4.