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13 Amazing UX Designer Portfolios and Why They Succeed
The job market for UX designers has become red hot in recent years and all this increased competition means it’s harder than ever to stand out from the crowd. Whether you’re a newbie or a seasoned pro, we hope this collection of inspirational UX designer portfolio sites will inspire you to update your portfolio to get noticed and land your next dream job.
Why is a portfolio important for UX designers?
When recruiters are screening candidates they’ll spend a couple of seconds scanning your CV for relevant keywords and work experience history. These days, they often don’t even do that because there are software solutions that do the same job much faster.
Even though your CV is important to get you shortlisted for a role, it’s a pretty boring document and you shouldn’t rely on it to get hired as a UX designer. It’s your portfolio that gives you an opportunity to stand out from the crowd and show what you can do.
Specialist recruiters (who actually know something about UX) as well as principle or lead UX designers will scrutinize your portfolio closely before they ever agree to interview you.
Every aspect of your portfolio, including the visual design, UX, copy and what you chose to include (and omit) will be used to make a judgement about who you are as a person, how good you are as a UX designer and whether you’ll be a good fit for the role.
What makes a successful UX designer portfolio?
1. Make sure your portfolio has great visual design and UX
OK, this sounds like a extremely obvious thing to say because (duh) you’re a UX designer, but it’s worth calling out.
When designers work on personal projects they often take the opportunity to express and (creatively) indulge themselves. Keep in mind that you’re building your portfolio website to showcase your talent for potential employers. Even though your portfolio can (and should) express your personality, keep it simple, stick to standard interaction patterns and keep the fancy, experimental stuff for other personal projects.
Think carefully about typography and font pairings, make sure all the copy is clear and well written and choose a cohesive color palette to represent your personal brand.
If visual and graphic design isn’t your strength, try and find someone qualified to give you advice or feedback. In general, the simpler your design is the more it will allow your project work to shine through.
2. Use a familiar portfolio layout
All portfolio websites tend to have similar information architecture and there’s no reason to deviate from this established pattern. Most portfolios include the following sections.
Landing / Home page
The landing page should have a short, punchy description that describes who you are and what skills you bring to the table. If readers want more personal detail about you they can click through to the ‘About’ page.
Most portfolios also have links straight through to each project from the landing page (in addition to a ‘Work’ or ‘Projects’ page).
Work / Projects page
The Work or Projects page gives a high level overview of each project in your portfolio and links through to a more detailed case study.
About page
This is where you can go into more detail about your specific skills, professional interests, career aspirations and the UX processes and tools you use.
There’s always debate around how much information about personal interests you should include. If you have a passion that’s non UX related then tell people about it – just don’t make it the primary focus.
Contact page
Include any social media profiles that focus primarily on work. If your Instagram account is mostly cat or cake pictures then it’s probably best to leave it out.
Resume page
Including your resume is optional, but it can be very useful when actively looking for a job. If you don’t like the idea of your resume (and contact details) hanging around online then one option is to password protect this section.
3. Focus on UX processes and tools
Each project in your portfolio should primarily focus on on the UX processes and tools you used to solve the problem. Just showing pretty pictures of completed website screens isn’t going to cut it. It’s also important remember that the audience for your site includes non UX folks so avoid jargon wherever possible.
Each project or case study should ideally include the following information, but exactly what gets included depends on the nature of the project.
Project overview / background
What the product is, what it does and what it looks like. If it’s live then provide a link.
Time frame
How long the project took to complete and a breakdown of the phases (if relevant).
Your role in the project
How did you contribute and what were your responsibilities?
Project goals / objectives
What problem was being solved and what were the deliverables and desired outcomes?
UX Process and tools
This is the most important section and is a chance for you to outline the relevant UX skills in your toolkit. It also give the reader an understanding of how you solved the problem, met the objectives and the exact steps you took to get there.
Examples of UX processes and tools might include interviews, surveys, competitive analysis, customer journeys, persona development, brainstorming, prototypes and wireframes.
Result / Outcomes
Any metrics you can show for the success of the project should be included here.
4. Only show your best (and recent) work
Choosing which projects to include in your UX designer portfolio is tricky and it’s very temping to include too much. After all you put your heart and soul into all of it right?
Most designers only showcase 3 or 4 projects and they should all be recent (completed in the last 12 – 18 months). Make sure the projects you choose highlight any valuable skills or specializations you have. If your building a beginner UX portfolio you probably have less work to choose from but the same general rules apply.
5. Design for a wide audience
Different stakeholders will be interested in different aspects of your portfolio. For example, a recruiter might be most interested in your previous work experience and a UX team lead might be much more interested in your UX process or personality. Make sure you design your site so that these different people can all quickly find what they need.
UX designer portfolio examples
This collection of example portfolios all do an amazing job of highlighting everything we’ve discussed above.