Suelyn Yu Follow

Currently product manager @ Chalk Schools. Former designer @ Hillary for America, Opower, and
Jun 13, 2016 4 min read

cc Alejandro Escamilla

How to pass a 2-minute UX portfolio

screening
A checklist for UX designers, recruiters, and
hiring managers

A lot of people have written helpful articles on how make a great UX

portfolio. Like this, this, and this.

Its good to read sage advice from designers, but I think the most im-
portant thing to remember is this:
 You have less than 2 minutes to make your
impression.

Most hiring managers and recruiters fly through portfoliosspending

less than 2 minutes per candidate. They glance through images, read a
few paragraphs, and then jump to your Linkedin profile or resume. The
best portfolios find a balance between thoroughness and scanability.

To optimize for this, I encourage using a classic design process: user-

testing.

Put your portfolio through user testing.

Ask some friendly UX designers who interview designers to review your

portfolio. Start by watching them silently and asking them to think out
loud. Then follow-up with some probing questions.

What draws their attention?

Do they navigate through your work the way you expect? Or focus
on less important areas?

What are they most impressed by?

Does anything make them question your abilities?

Whats missing?

Ive done this for my CCA students where I teach Sustainability Design.
Also as a hiring manager for Opowers UX design team, Ive reviewed
hundreds of portfolios, from interns to senior designers. From that, Ive
developed a mental checklist to evaluate the qualities we hire for in UX
designers.

I wanted to share my mental checklist for a couple of audiences:

1. UX designers
To review your portfolio before submitting it. If you cant find a
professional UX designer, you can test it yourself. Can you find all
these things in less than 2 minutes?
 2. Design recruiters
To filter through portfolios before passing them to a hiring manag-
er. You dont need to find everything listed. The more you do
though, the more likely the hiring manager will find the portfolio
thorough.

3. UX design hiring managers

To screen portfolios with a consistent method and articulate why
one is stronger than another. Ive also used this to build alignment
with my hiring team to define what were looking for.

This checklist includes quick cues I look for, common things people for-
get, and red flags to be wary of.

UX Portfolio Checklist
The Basics
Full name

What type of designer you are

Current position and organization (school or company)

What youre looking for (full-time, contract, internship)

Location

Linkedin profile or resume

Where to find you online (Medium, Dribbble, Twitter, Instagram)

How to contact you

Your work
35 case studies of your work that includes:

At least 1 project that shipped

At least 1 mobile and/or 1 web project

At least 1 project with user research

Projects from dierent industries or dierent end-users

Your process
Sketches or early wireframes

User research artifacts: photos, personas, quotes, and stimuli

Customer journey diagram / blueprints

Information architecture diagrams

Large images of your final designs

Project results / success metrics

Links to where you can use your live product

References to who you worked with

Your role and primary contributions to the project

Some long form writing explaining your thinking

Red flags
Glaring typos

Projects without final, polished designs

Projects unrelated to the type of work youre looking for

Any work you arent proud of

Nice to haves
About me / Personal statement

Passion projects and hobbies

Blog posts

In conclusion
From this list, you might think that you can collect your content and
throw it up on a website. However its important to remember that your
portfolio is your chance to tell a story about who you are and how you
work. How the story is told, which cant captured in a checklist, is what
separates the good portfolios from the great portfolios.
Want more advice?
Check out these other articles Ive written about UX design:

So you want to be a UX designer

A guide on how to get started
medium.com

Hiring UX designers:
11 qualities to look for
Its tough to evaluate UX designers. User experience
encompasses a lot of different skills, and as a
relatively new
medium.com

And great articles from other designers:

Tips for Building a World Class Design

Portfolio
Bridge is a professional development program for
experienced designers hosted by Designer Fund.
Bridge designers join
designerfund.com

An Inside Look at Facebook's Method for

Hiring Designers
Julie Zhuo started working at Facebook almost eight
years ago at age 22. At the time, she didn't know
what she'd be
firstround.com

Great Design Portfolios Are Great Stories

How to become a better designer by telling the story
of you behind your work.
medium.com
 Building your design portfolio? Here are 8
things I wish Id known.
Looking back on my old portfolio and reflecting on
lessons learned.
medium.com

Kudos
Thanks to Aaron Otani for the support and commitment contract.