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What does a strong portfolio mean for a UI/UX designer?

Have you ever thought about why some portfolios of UI/UX designers really stand out while many sink into the ocean of so-called poorly designed portfolios. While others treat it as some kind of digital resume, these few designers design it like a good movie trailer. This, according to recruiters, is what they call "strong portfolio." A strong portfolio is the main ingredient in a successful career for a UI/UX designer. It's not just something to display a person's designs; it's telling a powerful tale that would resonate with possible employers and clients. In this article, we are going to learn what constitutes a strong portfolio and how it can assist in landing you a job.

A recruiter does not gets time to look at all your 10-20 projects one by one. All they need is a sample of your capabilities which should impress them and shortlist your resume for the next round of interview. Instead of a large collection of small pointless projects, a good UI/UX portfolio should comprise of 3-5 in-depth projects with detailing all aspects of the design process, from research to final UI. This should help showcase problem-solving skills, visual storytelling ability, and technical abilities of designers. With fewer great projects, designers can communicate all their effectiveness in design, clear philosophy, and aesthetics more vividly, hence better chances of landing in their desired roles.

Do not have any ecommerce website projects in your UI/UX design portfolios because ecommerce industry has already reached a saturation point in ux research and it has the same standard userflow of home page, search, filters, product listing, product details, cart, checkout, payment, order success, order tracking, profile, order history, order details, wishlist, saved payments and saved locations. Even a kid will know this userflow and doesnot requires any user research. Do not include an ecommerce website project in your portfolio until you know that you are really adding some valuable features that has never been experienced before. Most importantly do not feature the userflow section in it because it waters down your ecommerce project further more.

UI/UX projects with original ideas that have never been done before are most likely to be impressing the recruiters mainly for your unique thought process. Do not just duplicate what others have done in the industry or redesign an existing website or app. These ripoffs of other famous projects are a huge turn off for the recruiters. Pick projects where you've broken creative boundaries, developed unique user experiences, or met a specific need in a new way. The rest is bringing attention to your skill to think critically, creatively wriggle out solutions, and intuitively design interfaces. That's how people will get you with a portfolio. 

To make a mark in the contemporary UI/UX design industry, the most important thing is to go beyond the well-wore trends seen through the previous years; for example, 2016 was a year for e-commerce projects. Then, the following year, 2017, came along with a wave of practically all AR/VR projects before heading towards their IoT cousins in 2018. Then, 2019 was for data science, pattern recognition and machine learning. But since the pandemic of 2020, health-related projects shot up during that period, especially the COVID-19 dashboards. Cryptocurrency and blockchain projects saw a great rise in 2021, while 2022 saw an inclination towards online trading. In 2023, students have shifted focus to AI powered applications and websites. Carve a place for yourself by exploring specific fields or areas that are not well represented. The offbeat projects demonstrate a creative thought process with problem solving skills and user-centered designs from the normal crowd.

Differentiation is made possible through addressing real-life problems and providing real-world solutions to have any hope of being recognized in the mad scramble for creativity about UI/UX design. A hi-tech project might look trendy and cool - but that does not at all denote a proper understanding of what a user really needs. You can for instance, create a website for a small fishery, for a language conservatory dedicated to preserving endangered languages, or a company that softens water. Each of these can demonstrate your ability to solve real-life problems. Similarly, developing an app that provides real-time information about ATM availability can address a common frustration experienced by many which will make recruiters think, "Wow, this problem was right in front of our eyes, and we didn't notice it." All of these are evidence that one can observe opportunities, understand user needs fairly well, and actually care about producing user-centered designs. 

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Avoid plagiarism and borrowing portfolios to avoid job rejection. In the design field, honesty and originality are crucial traits. Produce work reflecting your own skills and perspectives, not copying or borrowing others' portfolios. 

Your UI/UX projects is to show how much of an asset your are to a company and not a burden. So instead of blabbering "i would like to do crazy stuff" and designing an extremely creative website or app with jazzy colors splatters and cool animations which would only swallow developers time to develop, better design simple, good looking websites or apps that are actually productive, streamline processes, improve productivity, or enhance user satisfaction. As a demonstration of solving real-life challenges, showcase a user-friendly inventory system for a small business or a hassle-free customer support portal. Focus instead on simple yet beautiful designs meant to ease the user experience while serving the business goals, and you can place yourself as a possible asset to any organization.

Instead of showing your innovation in creating crazy designs, show your innovation in problem solving. Make an user-friendly app that focuses on specific fitness goals, like whether it is to improve mobility, control diabetes and blood pressure, or for athletes to work on their endurance, conditioning depending upon the sports they play, rather than a wildly futuristic, complicatedly looking app for a generic fitness tracker. A good fitness app will include all personal workout programs, diet charts, performance tracking tests. So, your innovation should come in adding features that would benefit the user and not in adding some fancy frames, borders in your user interface.

What do you prefer to see? A documentary or a feature film - mostly it is a feature film, the reason is because of the artistic drama of storytelling. It's the suspense- and twist-filled unfolding of scenes that keeps one riveted to an captivating story. In the same way, a compelling project presentation should unfold like a story, leading the audience through identifying a problem, to exploring a solution and ultimately towards implementation. This storytelling method would create a more engaging presentation while at the same time allowing the audience to understand how the project was thought about and the value of the solution.

Make sure your projects gets more views, likes and postive comments in behance, dribbble or wherever you have featured your portfolio so that recruiters might get a stronger impression that you have a good portfolio. Specifically, being active on your portfolio on sites like Behance or Dribbble helps you to gain visibility. Share your portfolio often with your peers, friends, family, and colleagues, and encourage them to view, like, and comment on your projects. Doing so helps boost the visibility of your project and lends it peer validating feedback. Beyond this, it engages an audience behind your work, willing to cultivate it as a community, which raises the chances of your projects trending in those domains and consequently attracting the attention of potential employers or recruiters.

To boost the scope of your portfolio, showcase it on as many sites as possible like Behance, Dribbble, Pinterest, Indfolio, and LinkedIn. Now link all of these collectives to your prospective employers and recruiters. Then, this is solved. Any audience can be plugged into this for greater exposure. Each has a separate crowd, and therefore, by going this route, it will give you avenues to connect with different employers whose kinds of works are viewed in varying aspects. To further enhance your online presence and showcase your technical skills set up your UI/UX portfolio on free website creation portals like Google Sites, WordPress, Wix, or Webflow to stay hooked up with your online space. A web hosted portfolio would allow you to try out various design approaches and interactions, while proving your capabilities to manage the website's technical aspects will give a totally different level of impression about you to the recruiters and will increase your visibility and your chances to get called for an interview.

Most of the hollywood fans complain that actor Dwayne Johnson aka The Rock is performing a similar character or personality in all his movies, whereas the same fans tell that different characters played by actor Tom Hanks would hate each other which shows the range and variety of characters he has played. So similarly make sure that your each and every project in your portfolio belong to different domains like one in healthcare, one in logistics, one in finance and one in education. The above 4 are just examples do not replicate the same ideas. This will help you showcase your versatility as a UI/UX designer and will give the recruiter confidence in you that you are adaptable and deployable across different sectors.

Rather than designing an one dimensional project, create a multi-stakeholder project with different applications for every stakeholder. This will demonstrate how you have researched users and pinpointed differences in each of their needs and wants and how you dealt with these multi-perspective concerns. For instance, you can develop a school management app that has a student, parent, teacher, and school management because you need to develop an app for every single one of them but each one must have a different feature without ruining the experience of the other users.

It is important to remind yourself that the UI/UX portfolio is an invitation, not a guaranteed job offer: potential employers can have a peek into your work. It is to exhibit all skill sets, creativity, and problem-solving ability while attracting recruiters into your portfolio. An impressive portfolio will open doors to some fantastic opportunities. However, make sure to view it as a doorway, not a destination. Keep honing your skills and catching up with the trends in the industry while constantly seeking out new experiences: this way, you are en route to a prosperous future in UI/UX design.