Q&A about UX portfolio formats, case studies, tailoring your portfolio, & more

Sarah Doody [00:00:00]: Hey there. I’m Sarah Doody, host of the Career Strategy Podcast. Many professionals are seeking more impact, flexibility, growth, and let’s face it, getting paid what they’re worth. But how do you unlock this in your career? It starts with strategy. I’m taking you behind the scenes of what’s working for my career coaching clients. You’ll hear strategies and actionable, yet sometimes against the grain, advice for how you can be the CEO of your career and stop dreading Mondays. Ready to level up your career? Let’s get after it.

Sarah Doody [00:00:38]: Hello, everyone. We are gonna go live for our UX Portfolio q and a today. It’s kind of a pop up q and a. Haven’t done one of these in a while. Alright. So I have nothing prepared for this. The whole goal was that you all would have awesome questions for me about portfolios, so I am gonna start answering some questions here in a moment. And just so we’re clear, this q and a is intended to be for people at all stages of their careers.

Sarah Doody [00:01:18]: You know, I’ve been helping people with their portfolios since 2017, believe it or not. This really was a bit of an accident back in 2017. People started asking me how to make a portfolio, and I kind of ignored the questions for a while because, frankly, I was really busy with my own career. And then one day, I ended up teaching this kind of one off workshop and thought, once I teach the workshop, I’ll never have to talk about portfolios again. And to my surprise, people wanted more help with other things, etcetera. So here we are so many years later. I’m still talking about not just portfolios, but really everything related to advancing your career now. This is not just for people who are at the very beginning of their careers.

Sarah Doody [00:02:09]: What is quite interesting to me is that in working with people on their careers since 2017, I’ve realized, you know, the challenge of updating your portfolio or your resume or preparing for a job search or an interview. That does not get easier the further along you get in your career. It just gets a little more complicated because, let’s say, you have 15 or 20 years of experience. You then have that much more work to try and communicate in a concise portfolio, resume, etcetera. Right? You also run into that challenge of, you know, you have potentially a broad range of skills or very deep in a certain thing depending on where your career has taken you. And so, you know, if you have 15 or 20 years experience, you’re challenged with, oh my goodness. How do I distill down those 12 years I was at Microsoft or the 10 years I was at Adobe or something into, you know, a little blurb on my resume. So if you are in that position of having 10, 15, 20 years or more experience, this totally relates to you.

Sarah Doody [00:03:31]: If you’re switching careers and you’re stuck with your portfolio, this definitely relates to you. And, of course, if you’re just starting out in your career, totally applies to you. Alright. So first question, this comes up every single time. What is the right format for a UX portfolio? Should I make a website? Should I make a presentation? Should I make a video? And if you put this into, you know, Google or ChatGPT you’re gonna get a wide variety of suggestions. And here’s my take after doing this since 2017. Your options really are make a website, make a presentation, or put your, projects on like a portfolio site like Behance or something like that. The reason that I am an advocate for portfolios as presentations is mainly a function of time and energy for you, the job seeker who is tired, potentially panicked, potentially overwhelmed, potentially time is a factor for you and you know, you know, you want to be applying for jobs in the next month or you have this much runway before, you know, the severance from your last job ends or something like that.

Sarah Doody [00:04:51]: And so by making your portfolio a presentation, a) it’s going to be a lot faster, b) it could potentially cost less money because if you make a website there are hosting costs and potentially other things involved. So the benefit to a presentation is that I think, number 1, you’re able to use the tool that you probably already know how to use, whether that’s Figma, Keynote, Canva, Illustrator, like, whatever you know, use the tool that you know best. And then just make sure you can export that as a PDF. Right? So speed is really a number one reason there. The other reason that I’m such a fan of portfolio presentations, really there’s two reasons. Second reason is, let’s say you do get to the interview stage, well, more than likely you will want to be able to present a project as a part of the interview process. Maybe that is actually a requirement of the job interview, right? And so if your portfolio is a website and then all of a sudden there’s this step of the interview process where you need to present something, are you gonna pull up a website and try and present a website? Or are you going to then think, oh my gosh, I need to make a presentation, and then you stay up all night for, like, 3 nights in a row making a presentation. So that’s reason number 2.

Sarah Doody [00:06:24]: And the third reason is that with a presentation, you’re very easily able to customize the portfolio for each role you apply to. Now, I know many of you might be thinking, how do I customize it? That sounds like a lot of work, like, why would I do that? Etcetera. By customize or tailor your portfolio, I’m not saying you need to, like, be rewriting things or making a brand new version with 3 different projects than the previous version of your portfolio for their job you applied to like last week. Tailoring or customizing your portfolio or frankly your resume is really about studying the job description and making sure that if the job you’re applying to is say a UX researcher role at a healthcare company, that your, in this case portfolio, screams research skills and if you have it, experience in the healthcare industry. And then of course it would go more granular than that if they mentioned certain software, certain research methodologies, or certain parts of the product, whether it’s like a b to b product or a b to c or a SaaS or something like that. But you can’t tailor your portfolio unless number 1, you actually read the job description and number 2, then make sure that your portfolio is really mirroring what they mentioned in the job description. That could be as simple as reordering the projects in your portfolio. Maybe the first project is about research and the the third project is about, like, research you did for a healthcare company.

Sarah Doody [00:08:06]: Well, I would want that third one, the research you did for a healthcare company up in the first kind of slot or first position in that presentation, so that that is the first project I encounter. Because if I’m the recruiter hiring manager at the company hiring a researcher for a healthcare company and the first project I see is a research project that you did at a different health care company, that is gonna catch my attention. So you could be reordering projects in your portfolio. You could be giving them different titles that maybe reflect or align more with what is in the job description. You could even be removing or adding projects from the portfolio. Let’s say your portfolio has 4 or 5 projects in it. Maybe in order to really shine a spotlight on the more research focused projects, you remove the 1 or 2 other projects that maybe aren’t as closely related to the skills and experience that they’re looking for in that job description. So that is why I know it’s a long answer, but that’s why I’m really a fan of let’s make our portfolio a presentation because as a job seeker, it’s going to save you time, it’s gonna save you energy, potentially, it’s gonna save you money, and it creates a better experience for the user of your portfolio.

Sarah Doody [00:09:29]: Because if you’re tailoring it to what the recruiters and hiring managers are looking for, it could help you potentially stand out. So that is my big answer to, should your portfolio be a website or a presentation or something else? There’s a lot of other reasons that we could go into, but this q and a is not meant to be just about format of your portfolio. Okay. Next one is, how long should a case study be in your portfolio? And some people want me to give them a literal word count, other people want to know exactly how many pages in a presentation that a case study should be. Here’s my take on this. So don’t be so concerned about the length of the case study because imagine it’s a presentation. You know, a 15 page presentation that is well laid out, that has good hierarchy on the slides, that uses basic design principles to make those 15 pages easy to consume, that even though it’s 15 pages or slides, that could be easier to consume than a case study that is 5 pages but not well laid out, and it’s just a wall of text on every single slide and a bunch of screenshots that have no labels or, like, screens, screenshots, whatever you wanna call it, you know, visuals that have no context, etcetera. So it’s not about literally how many slides, how many words, etcetera.

Sarah Doody [00:11:21]: It’s it’s a matter of as someone skims, scans, and maybe reads those slides, does it feel easy to read? So that is what you should be thinking of. I know that is a bit subjective, but, like, let that’s that’s reality, especially when it comes to UX. Right? Like, if we if someone said to me, well, how many, you know, how long should a homepage of a website be? Right? Like, how many pixels or something like that? That’s a ridiculous question to ask because the homepage of one website has vastly different goals than the homepage of another website. Right? And a homepage that is just, like, a bunch of text, poor layout, not great visuals, that’s gonna be really hard to read versus something that might be longer, but is well laid out, that might actually be a better experience. So I know I sometimes sound like a broken record, especially if you follow me on my podcast and things like that, but we have to start thinking about the UX of all of the components that go into advancing your career, your career marketing materials. Right? Like, the user experience of your portfolio, of your resume, of your LinkedIn profile, of the comments that you post on LinkedIn, of the posts that you make on LinkedIn. Right? And I think so many of us don’t think about that. And it’s kind of ironic.

Sarah Doody [00:12:54]: Right? Because, you know, you will mull over, like, a form or a home page or a user flow, you know, for hours for the product that you work on. But are you doing that with your resume or your portfolio? Probably not. Right? Are you thinking about the user of your portfolio? Are you doing research regarding the user of your portfolio? Right? And what I mean is when you’re scrolling LinkedIn, are you taking advice from people that are just offering advice? Are you taking advice from people who are actually involved in hiring for UX positions? Because the people that are involved in hiring for UX positions are potentially your users of your portfolio versus people that just make content to be like LinkedIn influencers or something about portfolios, but maybe they haven’t been involved in hiring anyone. Right? So be careful who you take advice from and be thinking about, more importantly, the user of your portfolio. We need to be UXing this stuff, otherwise, like, it’s a massive irony, right, that you’re applying to UX jobs, but you’re not thinking about the UX of, you know, your resume portfolio, etcetera. So that is my answer to how long should a case study be. Okay. Laura said, in a portfolio project, should I include every step I took or exclude things if it doesn’t contribute to the narrative? I love this question.

Sarah Doody [00:14:33]: So oftentimes in portfolios, I think there’s this assumption that you have to show every single step. I think part of this is because so many people make the assumption that they have to include the double diamond process and thus every step in the double diamond process. This is kind of the equivalent of like the rule that your resume has to be 1 page which is a total myth. The same applies here. You don’t need to show every single step of whatever you did, for your portfolio. And at the same time, if you are like a UX researcher, don’t assume that just because you’re a researcher, but, like, there’s this rule that you have to show the double diamond process that you have to, like, magically come up with design stuff you did even if you didn’t. So point number 1, we don’t need to show everything that we did, and we don’t need to kinda tick every box of the double diamond process. So, Lara, if maybe you were involved in launching a new feature from the point that it didn’t exist, going all the way through to launching it.

Sarah Doody [00:15:47]: It’s great that you did that. However, if you are a researcher, maybe you are spending more time and by time I mean like real estate or slides in your portfolio. Maybe you’re spending more time and energy on those research steps so that as someone is going through that project in your portfolio, you know, there is more emphasis on the research steps and maybe you choose to not even include the design steps. It’s it’s a bit subjective, right? I don’t know the exact project you worked on, but consider this permission to not need to include or invent every single step of a project. The other reason that I really like this approach is because if every project in your UX portfolio were theoretically going to show every step of the double diamond process. Put yourself in the shoes of the recruiters or hiring managers. Right? That may start to get quite repetitive if every project, like, follows the structure or steps of the double diamond process. Right? So instead, maybe 1 project number 1 focuses more on research.

Sarah Doody [00:17:03]: Project number 2, maybe that focuses more on design and usability testing of a feature that you worked on. Right? Project number 3, maybe that is just focused on, like, an interactive prototype you made. I don’t know. But that’s my answer to Laura’s question. Laura, hopefully, that helped you and everyone else listening to this. Let’s see. Oh, this is a good question too. Erica said, when I apply for a job, I often only have to upload a link from a website.

Sarah Doody [00:17:36]: Should I put my keynote presentation in Google, or do you have other ideas? Right. This question comes up all the time. So when you apply to a job there is a field that literally often says link to portfolio. And because of those words link to portfolio, many of you jump to conclusions that link to portfolio means your portfolio must be a website. That is not true. What that means is whoever made that form on that job application page chose the words link to portfolio. So in that case, if you have a presentation or a PDF, yeah, just put your presentation in the cloud, triple check the privacy settings, and drop that link in that field. In my opinion, that is all that means.

Sarah Doody [00:18:32]: Link to portfolio means whoever made the form chose those words for the form field. But seriously, triple check your privacy settings and access settings on the file because if someone clicked it and it was like, oh, wrong permissions or whatever, they’re probably not going to go through the steps to email you and ask you to change the permissions, etcetera, because, again, the user of your portfolio or users in your job search, they are way too busy to be one off emailing people to help them correct the link and and privacy settings for portfolios. So we have to think of our users. Alright. We have another question. In showcasing your skills in order to find a a freelance, you share design concepts daily on LinkedIn. So you wanted to know if you’re taking the right step or if there’s more that you need to do in order to achieve this. Yeah.

Sarah Doody [00:19:38]: This goes back to, like, making yourself become more visible, whether you want to be applying for full time jobs, getting freelance, client work, etcetera. And, you know, I think there can be value of posting, you know, daily kinda designs to your LinkedIn. Having not seen examples of this, I’m not quite sure what you are posting, but I think, you know, you need to make it very clear that you are open slash accepting freelance clients. So I would make sure that on some of those posts you’re posting, you have a little line at the end that says, like, hey. I’m currently accepting freelance clients, blah blah blah. Send me a DM on LinkedIn, or here’s a link to, you know, your website or whatever you have. Because in, kind of, sales and marketing, you have to remember that you need to remind people who you are and what you do over and over and over. Because just because you posted on LinkedIn yesterday, let’s assume, like, 10% of your LinkedIn followers saw that post.

Sarah Doody [00:20:49]: And even if they did see it, they may have forgotten or not even read it. Right? So making yourself visible either if it’s a candidate or for freelance projects, etcetera, it’s about maintaining constant visibility with the people that you hope are your customers, where customers might be, you know, that freelance client, customer might be, you know, their recruiter or hiring manager at the company where you want to work. And if you follow me on LinkedIn, like, you see me doing this if you pay attention. I’m quite frequently reminding people who I am and what I do through whether it’s podcast episodes, articles, q and a’s like this, right, or just flat out post on LinkedIn that say, hey. I’m Sarah. I run this 3 month UX career coaching program called career strategy lab. We’ve helped people from, I think, over 34 countries now advance their careers in UX and product development. And at first, when I started doing more like marketing, I didn’t really like posting so much.

Sarah Doody [00:21:59]: But when I realized, hey. If you want to be visible, you have to post and people need to be reminded. And because there is so much noise online, you have to assume most people are not seeing the content you’re posting, which is why that frequency element is so valuable. Alright. That was a little bit off topic, but I thought I would answer it because I’m sure it will be helpful to some of you who may be in the middle of a job search. Alright. I’m just checking out some more questions here. Alright.

Sarah Doody [00:22:34]: I see another one. This one comes up all the time. You’re working, in UX and you’re unable to show your clients work on your portfolio due to company’s policy, what can you include in your portfolio or case study? So a couple of things to think about. When it comes to being able to show projects in your portfolio, if the work is under an NDA or there are privacy concerns, step number 1 really is to reevaluate whether or not you can actually show the work. I think a lot of people automatically assume they are not allowed to show anything ever ever ever, and that may not be the case, but you won’t know unless you ask. So if you have a good relationship with someone at the company or you’re still working there, it might be worth, you know, going back to them and saying, like, hey, I wanna add this to my portfolio. Can you clarify what this means? Like, does it literally mean I cannot show this anywhere? Does it mean that I can’t put this on a web page? Because I think there’s a lot of concern around putting projects in portfolios because of this because so many portfolios are websites which then mean they’re searchable and indexable etcetera, you know, by search engines. So a good question might be, hey, if I put this in a presentation that I take along with me to interviews or when I apply, could I include it? And then there’s a step of, can I include this project if I were to, like, redact or anonymize it somehow, whether that means making how do I phrase this? Removing the company name or logo, inserting placeholder content, etcetera.

Sarah Doody [00:24:21]: And then if it’s a matter of, like, you cannot show this project, here’s how I would approach it. I would think to myself, how could I talk about what I did in, like, an abstract way so I could still showcase my skills. So let’s keep going with our, like, you’re a researcher to health care company example. Right? If they say, nope, not allowed ever to talk about this. Fine. Now let’s say it was some, like, I don’t know, large qualitative research study. Great. If I said to you, tell me about this project without telling me the company name or like disclosing any specifics of the company, I would challenge you to write that out and see if you can talk about it.

Sarah Doody [00:25:10]: Because let’s say you were working at the Mayo Clinic, this giant, you know, health company here in the United States. You could probably tell me about the project without saying Mayo Clinic. Right? Like, this was a 3 month qualitative research study for an international health care organization that wanted to learn and you could probably give some, like, you know, reason for the project that was kind of abstract enough. And then for, like, the steps of that project, you could tell us details like, okay, well, why did we choose this research method? How many people or what was the scope of the research project? I still think you could do that without disclosing that that was for the Mayo Clinic and showing any, like, specific information that would be against the NDA. So that’s how I would approach it. Of course, there may be times when you’re never ever allowed. However, I think it’s not like a binary thing. So hopefully, that gives you some ideas of what you could do to think through and explore, like, is there a way that you could show that project so it isn’t just like, nope, I can’t include that because so and so told me.

Sarah Doody [00:26:27]: Okay. One more that came in via email, and this was actually a podcast episode last week. How do you handle a really large project that you worked on in your portfolio. And if you listen to that podcast episode, it gives this example of someone that worked at, I think, with Dell Computers for 3 years or something like this on this giant project. And the takeaway is, well, can we take that 3 year project and break it up into smaller projects for your portfolio? So instead of having one project in your portfolio that is trying to communicate 3 years of work, can that become, okay, Dell project 1, qualitative research study. Dell project number 2, like product strategy and prototype development. Dell project number 3, usability testing and something else. That is also a great strategy, for those of you that are in a situation where you think, oh, I don’t have enough experience or projects, etcetera.

Sarah Doody [00:27:34]: That allows you to potentially turn one project into multiple projects in your portfolio. So listen to the episode because I don’t wanna have to replete everything I already said last week in the podcast, but that would be a good one for you guys to listen to if you are struggling with how to include, you know, maybe a larger project, especially if you’re one of those people who are more advanced in their career, maybe are working on these big large projects, that might be really applicable to you. Alright. So that is all the time we have for today. Thank you all. So I mentioned career strategy lab. It is my 3 month UX and product career coaching program where we are not a boot camp. We are more focused on helping you advance your career, whether that might mean getting a promotion, helping you with your current or upcoming job search, or, you know, getting all your stuff together just to be ready in case unexpected opportunities come your way.

Sarah Doody [00:28:39]: So if you are interested in that, head over to career strategy lab.com. Also, I’m currently running a summer session of my UX portfolio sprint. Think of it like a design sprint for your portfolio. If you have been procrastinating on your portfolio and finally want to finish it, this is for you. The number one reason people say they joined this sprint so far is I’ve been procrastinating. I want to finish this once and for all. So if you wanna join that portfolio sprint, just go to careerstrategylab.com and then slash portfolio sprint, and you will find that there. And I think that’s all.

Sarah Doody [00:29:27]: So hope you have a great rest of your week, potentially long weekend if you are in the United States. And make sure to follow me on LinkedIn so you see the upcoming Q and A’s that I’m doing. I’m gonna try and do more of these throughout the summer, but that is all and have a great rest of your day. All right, bye everyone.

Sarah Doody [00:29:50]: Thanks for listening to the Career Strategy Podcast. Make sure to follow me, Sarah Doody, on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or LinkedIn. If anything in today’s episode resonated with you, I’d love hear about it. Tag me on social media or send me a DM. And lastly, if you found this episode helpful, I’d really appreciate it if you could share it with a friend or give us a quick rating on Spotify or review on Apple Podcasts. Catch you later.