Crafting a Standout Design Portfolio: Ultimate Checklist
In today’s competitive job market - especially when hunting careers in design - your portfolio can make or break your chances of landing that dream job. A well-crafted portfolio not only showcases your skills but also tells the story of your design journey.
Follow this checklist to make your portfolio stand out to recruiters and hiring managers, and increase your chances of getting interviews.
When managers are recruiting designers, they must sift through a lot of candidates, so how can you stand out? Our design recruitment expert Tyra Alexander shares insider tips for crafting an impressive portfolio.
1. Product Thinking
Be empathic
User Understanding: Show a deep understanding of how the people who use your product think and feel.
Beyond Personal Experience: Demonstrate your ability to design for users beyond your own experience.
Use intention
Design Choices: Be intentional about your design choices and explain trade-offs.
Problem Statement: Ground your process with a clear problem statement and success criteria.
Product Sense
Identifying Opportunities: Display your ability to identify product opportunities independently. If working in an agency, how do you think beyond the brief? How did you validate solving the right problem when working with a product manager?
Data-informed Decisions: Justify your decisions based on referenced data and research where possible [principles, values, and intuition].
Data-Independent Decisions: Show that you can make informed decisions even in the absence of data.
Meaningful Ideas: Articulate meaningful product ideas that solve real human needs, whilst also balancing business needs and technical constraints.
2. Visual Design
Attention to Detail
Spacing & Alignment: Ensure all elements are precisely aligned and spaced evenly.
Hierarchy: Use visual hierarchy to guide the viewer's eye through your designs.
Consistency: Maintain consistency in type, icon placement, and color usage.
Polish & Craft: Pay close attention to the details in your design, including animation and illustration, leading to a polished and well-crafted result.
Accessibility: Make sure your designs are accessible to all users, considering color contrast and text readability.
3. User Interface Design
Exploration of Solutions
Range of Solutions: Consider showing different design options by displaying various solutions for the same issue. What ideas did you think about before choosing the final design?
Platform Awareness: Be aware of platform differences and justify intentional deviations from Operating System guidelines.
4. Design Systems
Systematic Approach
Existing Systems: Showcase work done using existing design systems.
Designing New Patterns: Highlight experience in creating or extending design systems and designing new patterns.
5. Interaction Design
Flow Depth
End-to-End Flows: Include clear and understandable end-to-end flows to demonstrate a broad scope of work, focusing on the entire product lifecycle and user experience. While feature-level work is also valuable, it represents a narrower scope and might not fully showcase your capabilities for senior roles.
Don’t just show the happy path: Show the interesting challenges, considerations or trade-offs along the way, to get to the end result.
Complex Problem Solving: Demonstrate your ability to solve complex problems.
Prototyping: Show the highest fidelity prototypes possible to show how interactions work.
Understanding Patterns: Display strong understanding of common and established interaction patterns.
Thoroughness
Edge Cases: Account for, and call out,edge cases in your designs.
Accessibility: Ensure your solutions consider accessibility.
Offline Functionality: Show solutions that work in low or no internet situations.
Iterations
Feedback & Iteration: Document your iteration process and learnings.
Focus on Key Elements: Identify and focus on the most important elements of each iteration.
Effective Solutions: Ensure your final solutions effectively and efficiently accomplish the stated tasks.
6. Communication
Clear Communication
Plain Language: Explain problems and complexities in plain, accessible language.
Individual achievements: Avoid overuse of the collective “we”. Help the viewer understand what your personal contributions were, as well as how you supported the team.
Avoid Buzzwords: Avoid using technical jargon, acronyms or buzzwords.
Project Goals: Clearly articulate project goals, your approach to solutions, and your individual contributions.
Idea Conveyance: Effectively convey your ideas and handle feedback constructively.
Handling Feedback
Feedback Management: Show how you handle feedback and incorporate it into your designs.
Final Tips
Regular Updates: Keep your portfolio updated with your latest work.
Diverse Projects: Include a variety of projects to showcase your range and versatility.
Contextual Stories: Tell the story behind each project, including challenges faced and solutions found.
Professional Presentation: Ensure you present your portfolio professionally, make it easy to navigate, and make it visually engaging.
By using this checklist, you can make sure your portfolio shows your skills and how you think, pay attention to details, and communicate well. These qualities will impress hiring managers and help you get interviews.
Good luck!
Good Maven hires and coaches the world's designers.
We’re intentional about meeting designers where they are and supporting them to get to where they want to go. We strive to provide the highest level of expertise in the world for design hiring and coaching by being an outstanding place to recruit, coach and hire.
We have built teams, hiring processes and programs for enterprise, agency, startup, and cultural institutions, including WhatsApp, Instagram, Meta Reality Labs, Google, The Athletic and McLaren Racing.
In addition to hiring, we offer a full spectrum of coaching support, including portfolio reviews, interview prep and hard skills development in product design, interaction design and product thinking. Contact us to schedule a free chemistry session with an experienced coach to see how we can best support you to get where you want to go.
