UX Portfolio Myth: You can’t show projects that didn’t launch (Myth 4 / 5)

Sarah (00:00)

If you’ve been told that you can’t show work that didn’t launch or work that went wrong in your portfolio, I want you to know that is false. Recruiters and hiring managers want to hear what went wrong. So today I’m gonna tell you why with research from my conversations with recruiters and hiring managers.

welcome back to the Career Strategy Podcast. We are in the middle of our five-part series about the UX portfolio myths. Last week’s myth was that you must show the whole end-to-end process for every project in your portfolio. Totally false. If you want to go back and listen to the other three episodes, they will be linked in the show notes or just scroll back wherever you’re listening to this podcast and you will see them.

But let’s dive into this myth about the idea that you can’t show work that didn’t launch or work that went wrong in your portfolio. As I said, I totally disagree with this. And I want to explain to you why. So recruiters and hiring managers want to hear what went wrong. People who understand how UX works in the real world.

Understand that things go wrong all of the time. Things don’t launch all the time. And it doesn’t mean that you are a failure, that you are a bad researcher, that you’re a bad designer, that you’re a bad UX writer, whatever you do. Smart recruiters and hiring managers are not thinking to themselves, wow, this project didn’t launch. That person must be a really bad researcher, right? They’re not.

Assigning the blame or the fact that that thing didn’t launch, that didn’t launch as planned, that it didn’t go as planned. They’re not assigning the blame to you. And if you encounter anyone like that in your job search, you probably do not want to work for someone like that because I believe that is a giant red flag that someone doesn’t understand the reality of doing UX in the real world. So a canceled project or a pivoted project.

Actually, it is an amazing opportunity to show how you think, how you like adapt and collaborate when things get messy. And that’s what the job of these projects in your portfolio is meant to do. Projects that didn’t launch, projects that didn’t go as planned, or projects where things went wrong, those are amazing opportunities to show how you adapt, how you pivot, how you deal with.

The unexpected. And that is what recruiters and hiring managers want, because that is a huge part of actually doing UX in the real world. So I want to go through a couple of examples that I hear all of the time. Maybe you’re thinking to yourself, well, we were not allowed to do research, or research was cut. Therefore, if I include this project in my portfolio where there is not a section about the research, people are going to think that.

I made a bad decision and that I skipped research. And that’s likely not true, right? If that did happen to you, just explain in your portfolio why that happened. And like don’t be a jerk and throw people under the bus, but just explain, for example, well, why was research skipped? maybe you could also say, well, what did you do in lieu of research? Was there other

Lower lift type of research that you were able to lean on? Was there existing research that you went back to? Were there maybe people internal that you were able to get insights from? Maybe it was customer support, a gigantic source of research insights. also, you could talk about what research you would have done, like in hindsight, though we were not allowed to do research or research was cut.

For whatever reason, if I could have a do-over, here is the research I would do. Here is what I would want to learn. Therefore, here is the research method I would choose and the type of people I would talk to, etc. That is taking this real life constraint of not doing research, but not letting it or not worrying.

That it’s gonna show people that you’re a bad researcher, you don’t know research, and instead telling them the research you would do if you had a do-over. It’s a great opportunity to flex your UX skills and show people, hey, you could do the research. It’s just for this project, it didn’t happen. On the flip side, let’s say you worked on something and it didn’t launch and you didn’t get to do usability testing or something like that.

Okay, no problem. Just in your portfolio, have a slide or a section that’s telling us, well, what research would you do if it launched? Like again, similar to the hindsight or the do-over, if this did launch, what research would you do? Right. Again, showing that you understand the overlap of research and product and what you would want to do.

And what you would want to learn and why you would choose those research methods, whatever they are. Now, as I’ve been telling you all along in this series, I’m not just making up my opinions on all these topics. I’m backing this up with what I’m hearing from recruiters and hiring managers in interviews I’m doing with them every single month. And I spoke with Jenny Bible. She is a UX manager at the Home Depot.

She also is an alumni of my Career Strategy Lab program. So she is one of our many examples of someone who joined Career Strategy Lab, got hired, in her case, UX manager at Home Depot, and is now hiring. And so when I asked Jenny to address this myth of not being able to include projects that didn’t launch or that didn’t follow, you know, this perfect process, here’s what Jenny said.

She said, projects get canceled all the time. Tell me what you did, learned, and what you’d do differently next time. How did you collaborate? UX is more about all of those things. If you want to listen to more and there is a lot more, go check out episode 173 of the Career Strategy podcast to hear more about Jenny’s answer to that and many other topics in.

Hiring, but hopefully this helps you see why this narrative out there that you can’t show work that didn’t launch or work that went wrong is a total myth. Because in reality, there is no perfect project, right? Things just go wrong, get changed all of the time. It’s just reality. And so hiring managers and recruiters.

Want to hear how you deal with that. And projects that didn’t launch or didn’t go as planned are perfect examples of showing especially your soft skills about how you deal with adversity, challenge, the unknown, etc. So, permission for you to include projects that didn’t launch or projects that didn’t go well, because I assure you, hiring managers like Jenny.

And the others I’ve mentioned in this series are wanting to hear about those types of projects. All right, so that is our fourth myth in this series. And to give you a preview of our fifth and final UX portfolio myth, next week I will tell you why your UX portfolio does not need to show your personality and your passion.

despite what you may be hearing elsewhere. All right, that’s all for today. And again, if you are just jumping into this series, all the other episodes are linked in the show notes. And if you just scroll back in your podcast app or wherever you’re watching this, you’ll see the five other myths. So make sure you do that because chances are you have probably subscribed to at least one of these five myths.

All right, that’s all. I will see you next week.