Jeffrey Neo

Portfolios

Portfolios

Tips and resources

For aspiring UX professionals, a portfolio is your first chance to showcase your work to recruiters and hiring managers. For new UX professionals like myself, I now use my portfolio as a space to reflect on my UX experiences and to share tips and resources I’ve collected over time.

Disclaimer: Any tips, resources, and opinions posted here represent my personal views, not of my employer.

Updated: 103021

Dos and Don’ts When Putting Your Portfolio Together

Dos

  • Jot down your main points (in a word doc) before anything else.

  • Give credit and explain your role for each project.

  • Think of case studies like a magazine (immersive, visual-heavy, pull quotes and plenty of section paragraphs).

  • Think about what content is important.

  • Use your own voice.

  • Have an easily navigable site.

  • Articulate your solution, iterations, outcome, and how your solutions became actionable.

  • Have attention-grabbing headers and caption every image.

  • Show how your solution is potentially measurable.

Dont’s

  • List every project you’ve worked on.

  • Use acronyms, buzzwords, and jargon.

  • Have the most visually beautiful site (but definitely a plus).

  • Explain the entire project process.

  • Plainly emphasize different steps in your process.

  • Need to have solutions completed tested, especially with hypothetical projects.

Helpful Resources

 

Online articles

  • The Ultimate Checklist to Go Through Before Sending Your UX Portfolio: You may think you know your portfolio well, but a checklist to ensure your portfolio has everything can be very helpful.

  • How to Critique Your Own UX Portfolio: It’s essential to step back and critically review your portfolio. A sentence might be confusing or you might be missing key information like your career goals. This resource will teach you how to critique your portfolio and and consider how it will come across to someone looking at it for the first time.

 

Nice portfolios

  • Xinni Chng: Provides a detailed yet concise overview of the UX processes. Visuals are appealing and highly effective in supporting the narrative.

  • Sam Coppenger: Easily navigable and tells a cohesive story. Feels like an “extended resume,” which, in my opinion, is the purpose of a portfolio, especially for entry-level UX professionals.

  • Catherine Lee: Great visuals for each case study. The “About me” paragraph is also on-point.

  • Amalie Barras: The left navigation bar is uncommon but very effective for navigation. The “problem-process-learnings” approach used in the case study is easy to follow.