9 Common Constraints in UX Portfolio Design

“I have never been forced to accept compromises, but I have willingly accepted constraints.”
Charles Eames

As you start to prepare your portfolio, you may have some constraints to handle. Let’s discuss these now.

Limited Work History

If you are just starting out, your work history will be limited. Don’t fret. Everyone has to start somewhere.

Good hiring managers like to see the following when recruiting for a junior role:

• enthusiasm for UX design

• curiosity about people and technology

• ability to learn quickly

• attention to detail

• a willingness to receive constructive criticism and develop off the back of it - in practice, this means evidence of teamwork and collaboration

So, take a deep breath and relax - the best hiring managers will allow for a candidate’s lack of experience when they review a portfolio. Just one case study could be enough if it’s a good one, and complemented by other material that ephasises the personal qualities they are looking for.

“Anything that demonstrates their interests and abilities counts,” says Francois Jordaan of the digital agency Isotoma. “Theoretical pieces, hack day stuff, personal homepage, hobby stuff, blogging, etc., all show they’re self-motivated with a curiosity and passion for this field.”

James Chudley of UX agency CX Partners adds, “Demonstrating learning, blogging and participating in hack days is critical because that means they are willing to get off their asses and contribute, learn and try things out.”

If you have a limited work history, you can complete your portfolio in a number of ways.

Do a course

Many short-term courses in UX design encourage participants to create a case study as they work through the syllabus. These are a good option if you can afford the fees, particularly when you consider that some of the institutions also hold end-of-course meet-ups with potential employers.

Ensure you thoroughly research any course you’re considering. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Does the syllabus involve completing a project that can serve as a portfolio case study?

• Does it have a good reputation?

• Does the lead instructor have plenty of industry and teaching experience?

• Is the course accompanied by a certificate of attendance or a certification?

• Is it worth the money?

Participate in a hackathon

Hackathons offer designers a very quick way to generate a case study. These short-term events, also known as hack days, bring together developers and others to work intensively on software or hardware projects. Companies often organise hackathons to encourage development using their products, but local community groups also arrange hackathons to address a government or non-profit cause.

In addition to obtaining portfolio material, you will also get to meet potential contacts who may pass work your way at a later date.

Hackathons often last a day or a full weekend. They begin with presentations that set the tone and explain the project brief to the participants. After the talks, participants will divide into groups and start working on their solution to the problem posed.

There is often a shortage of designers at hackathons, possibly because organisers promote the events as development-led. The short duration of the event compresses a product development cycle into just a few hours, so everyone is working under pressure, and fuelled by coffee and pizza.

Designers can find working in this environment challenging but can offer real value to their teams if they are successful. You can:

• Help your team prioritise ideas to ensure the proposed solution is achievable within the time available.

• Ensure your team understand and work towards the same experience vision.

• Increase the speed of development by encouraging your team to use user interface standards or conventions.

You will offer the most value if you can research and understand the product area before the hackathon takes place.

Hackathons typically wrap up with the participating teams presenting their solutions, so there is the opportunity for presentation practice too. Occasionally organisers announce winners and announce prizes. Winning would make a great portfolio story. Take plenty of photos to support your written narrative.

Offer a non-profit help

A professional designer should never work free of charge, but there’s no issue in donating your skills to a non-profit or charity you believe in. Think of a cause you have an affinity for and offer to help where you can. Handle the project professionally, treating your time as important a currency as money. Document your process as you go and you should have a great case study with an appreciative client.

Make up a project

This is the most common option chosen by junior designers. If you adopt this approach, there are a few guidelines to ensure you get the most out of it.

First, avoid contributing to ‘the dribbblisation of design’.¹ The concern here is that the dribble community praises and promotes superficial design work that is intended to impress fellow members rather than address real business issues. If you’re going to make up a project for your portfolio, try to solve a real problem.

Secondly, ensure the project is as realistic as possible by considering real-world constraints. In January 2010, Tyler Thompson redesigned the Delta Air Lines boarding pass. It was a gorgeous design with one problem - implementing it would require Delta replace over 10,000 printers situated at airports around the globe to handle new typography and colour requirements. Take the time to research and factor in real-world constraints - your design will be much stronger if it’s practical.

Finally, be realistic in your scope of work. In other words, don’t attempt to redesign LinkedIn in an afternoon, even if it appears that this is what the original company did.

Should you redesign your prospective employer’s website?

In February 2014, Francine Lee posted the first of a pair of articles about redesigning the photos experience of the cloud storage app Dropbox.² The article, with its robust research focus, caught the attention of Dropbox themselves and she joined the company three months later.

Despite Francine’s success, boldly suggesting changes to a prospective employer or client’s product is not without risk. Some companies may respond well to having their product analysed or redesigned. Others may not. Anticipate what the response might be before you go to the trouble of learning directly. Study as much as you can about the client and their business - an unsolicited redesign will put your knowledge under the microscope and highlight just how little or much you know. If you’re going to go ahead with an unsolicited redesign, ensure it’s the best work you can do.

Design Contests

Design contest websites promise clients ‘dozens of unique designs in just a week’. The site invites designers to provide work to a brief on the basis that they will receive payment if their work is selected. For most participants, they’re just a form of speculative work where they are guaranteed to lose out.

Speculative work has a long-term damaging effect on the design industry. Requesting work for free demonstrates a lack of respect for the designer, the design process, and the value of effective design. Unsurprisingly, many professional design organisations recommend against spec work.

A major issue with design contests is that participants are left to respond to a brief rather than allowed to partner with a client towards a successful outcome. Great design results from a designer working alongside a client and their team. Design contests bypass this meaningful collaboration. Without client assistance, participants will also struggle to carry out any meaningful research required by the project.

Fundamentally, a lack of design collaboration and research is unlikely to result in the best outcome for the client. Invariably, clients choose the most attractive design. This will not result in a good story for a portfolio.

Ultimately it’s up to designers to educate and inform our clients about the best way to commission design. There will always be people willing to enter design contests and produce speculative work. It would be great if you weren’t one of them.

Experience in a Different Role

Transferring from one job to another is one of the most difficult things to do. It’s often easiest to accomplish as an internal candidate. Get into a business in one role then rally to move across to the UX role you desire.

It’s still possible to make a career change as an external candidate, just harder. To give it your best shot, write up your previous work as case studies and ensure you highlight your transferable skills throughout.

Figure 9-1
Highlight transferable skills.

One Loooooong Project

In the busiest cities, it is often unusual for a UX designer to stay more than 18 months with the same employer. But some designers do stay around for longer, particularly in less buoyant job markets, and sometimes they work on the same, long project.

There are two things you can do if you have worked on the same project for years and do not wish hiring managers to stereotype you as a specialist or as someone who is lazy and stayed in the same role through inertia.

First, break the long project into multiple case studies. Treat each new or updated feature as a separate achievement. Demonstrate that there was plenty of variety in your work even though you worked on the same project throughout. In other words, make it obvious that you didn’t just lazily do the same thing every year for several years.

Figure 9-2
Break a long project into multiple case studies like this.

Secondly, steal a few ideas from the previous section on limited work history and supplement your project experience with examples of hackathon, non-profit, or personal project work.

Non-Disclosure Agreements

Non-Disclosure Agreements, or Confidentiality Agreements, can cause designers considerable anxiety. There is a story making the rounds of a designer who completed some work for a digital agency and placed it in his public portfolio. Shortly afterwards, the agency sued him for being in violation of the confidentiality agreement he had signed. It’s an experience none of us wish to have.

Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) are simply an agreement between a designer and their client that protects information the client deems confidential.

Common Suggestions Debunked

Browse the web and you will find a myriad of suggestions on how to deal with a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Some of these deserve debunking, so let’s begin.

Break the Non-Disclosure Agreement

Some designers adopt a ‘devil may care’ attitude to Non-Disclosure Agreements and share their work regardless of what they have previously signed. Their thinking is that no company in their right mind will sue. Therefore, the risk is low.

While the likelihood of being sued for having confidential work in your portfolio may be small, that’s not the only risk.

Several of the hiring managers I’ve spoken with for this book have in the past received material clearly labeled private and confidential which they feel they shouldn’t have been given. In one case, a candidate sent a hiring manager a full copy of a financial organisation’s yet-to-launch digital strategy with ‘Commercially Sensitive. Not to be distributed outside the company.’ stamped on every single page. The hiring manager felt compromised, immediately rejected the candidate and informed the recruiter representing them to take more care in advising their clients in future.

So, breaking a Non-Disclosure Agreement and sharing confidential information in your portfolio will lead to many hiring managers wondering if you will do the same with their material. They’ll question your ability to keep a confidence and be concerned about your professionalism in general. Just don’t do it.

Restrict portfolio access with a password

Another suggestion often given online is to protect your portfolio with a password, and only to provide access to prospective employers and clients that you have previously spoken with. There are two issues with this approach. First, portfolio reviewers have an extra hurdle (entering the password) to jump before they can see any work. Secondly, you lose the opportunity to have a public portfolio, which may be important to you.

Password-based protection is beneficial only if it’s only what the Non-Disclosure Agreement will permit. If so, put the minds of portfolio reviewers at ease. State clearly that you have permission to include the material. ‘Made available with permission.’ is all you need to say.

Figure 9-3
Be careful. A message like this could suggest that you are willing to divulge commercially-sensitive information only if an email address is provided.

Anonymise the work

The most popular suggestion online for dealing with NDAs is to anonymise the work affected. This is rarely successful as it is often possible to identify the client by cross-referencing the obfuscated design against information provided in an accompanying resume or CV.

Let’s say you have an excellent e-learning case study in your portfolio. The client isn’t named, and any identifying text has been redacted or removed. So far, so good. But then the hiring manager recalls your resume or CV stated that you had previously worked for an e-learning company and who it was. They now know who the obfuscated work was produced for.

Figure 9-4
Anonymising work may not work if the client is listed in an accompanying resumé or curriculum vitae.

So, if you are going to anonymise work, you have to remove the client or employer’s name from your resume or CV. But then you lose the value of including that company in your resume or CV and who you’ve worked for is normally the main thing a recruiter or hiring manager is interested in.

Other Options

So, what’s a boy or girl to do? Well, we do have options.

Avoid Signing an NDA in the first place

The ideal situation, of course, is to avoid signing an NDA in the first place.

Ask for company policy during the recruitment process. The best time to do this is not at your initial interview, but after the company has shown an interest in hiring you. Simply ask them what their policy is on employees sharing sketches, screenshots, wireframes and other deliverables in their portfolio.

If they reply that all work is subject to a Non-Disclosure Agreement, decide if it’s a deal breaker or if you want to ask for changes to it.

Review the NDA and understand what, if anything, it allows

Always get a work contract reviewed by a lawyer. If this isn’t an option, do take the time to review the document yourself. Don’t just sign it. I’ve lost track of the number of employment contracts I’ve read over the past decade only to find a troublesome clause that the client subsequently claimed has never been a problem for anyone else.

I’m not entitled or insured to provide legal advice, but there a few things I particularly look out for when I come to review a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

The Definition of Confidential Information Have they defined the information considered confidential by the agreement? Have they stated what the agreement doesn’t cover?

The Limitation on Use and Disclosure: What, if anything, can you do with any of the information that is covered by the agreement? Your obligations as recipient should be clear.

The Term of the Agreement What is the time limit of any obligations stated in the agreement? Until the project is made public by the employer or client? A year? Until you die?

Ask for the NDA to be amended

Once you’ve read the Non-Disclosure Agreement, you may wish to request permission to be able to:

• Mention the client in your resume or CV.

• Include work in your portfolio.

• Present the work to prospective clients in private.

You may also wish to request agreeing on a time-limit to any Non-Disclosure Agreement. A maximum of three years should be perfectly adequate for most employers or clients.

It is much harder to request permission later on, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth trying. Requesting approval to distribute a specific case study may be more successful than a general request to be able to share deliverables and other documentation.

Share what you can share

Your final option is to share what you can share, and no more. But what you can share is probably more than you think.

Non-Disclosure Agreements typically protect information that is not in the public domain. So, information that has previously been released by the client or employer is not subject to disclosure.

If your employer or client has issued a press or media release about your project at any point, you can probably share the information the release contained.

And if your job description was ever made public, that’s also information considered public - it should be safe for you to share that too.

Finally, see if you can write around your Non-Disclosure Agreement by summarising your design process without any of the commercially-sensitive detail.

Whatever you do, stay within the limitations of your Non-Disclosure Agreement.

Work You’re Not Proud Of

Speak to any designer in confidence and they’ll admit to working on projects that somehow got away and failed to live up to their vision. They’ll talk about the wasted opportunity where they advised their team as much as they could only for the result to be somewhat lacking in comparison to their personal expectation.

Do you feel like that about one of your projects? Are you hesitant about including it?

If so, it’s probably a good time to remind you that a UX portfolio is not for you. It’s for a prospective employer or client. You’re using a UX portfolio to explain your value to a third-party by describing what you achieved for previous clients. To put it bluntly, your personal satisfaction with the troublesome project isn’t that important. Instead, ask yourself: What did it do for your employer or client? What did it mean to the intended users or customers?

If you ask yourself these questions, I hope you will discover that the product or service was probably in better shape when you left than when you joined. If so, telling a good story about it shouldn’t be hard.

And if there were situations where your employer or client refused to follow best practice, resist the temptation to apportion blame. Describe these client decisions simply as constraints in as positive a tone as possible and follow up with the solution. For example:

Since ACME felt unable to allow access to end users, stakeholder interviews informed the design. I produced a prototype application that we revised iteratively based on feedback. The final result was a flexible design, structured to allow for change following launch. This way, ACME could make changes based on user feedback without again having to rebuild the application from scratch.

What if you have documents illustrating your original experience vision? The one that wasn’t quite achieved? Should you include those? Perhaps. You could describe them as a forward-looking reference design. Every delivery is a step in a product development journey. It perfectly fair to show where the designer (and hopefully the team) would like to end up along the way.

But only if you think it would add value to your portfolio.

Work Completed Some Time Ago

There are situations such as returning to the industry after a period of leave - maternity leave, for example - when you may need to feature work you completed some time ago.

If this is the case, try to avoid drawing attention to the age of the case study:

• Remove any date stamps.

• Remove or reduce artefacts or images that look dated.

• If necessary, emphasise timeless design techniques the portfolio reviewer is likely to be familiar with.

Work in Progress

Showing work that is in progress and yet to obtain a business outcome isn’t quite the same as telling a joke without a punchline. It can still be worthwhile if the project reflects good practice.

If you want to include work in progress, do write something that has value. Follow the PAR (Problem, Action, Result) format we learned in Chapter 8, and replace the result with any outcome to date and the next steps.

Avoid ‘Coming Soon’ or ‘Under Construction’

If you are creating an online portfolio, avoid providing a case study link to a placeholder that says ‘Coming soon’ or ‘Under construction’. Following a link for something that sounds interesting only to find there is nothing there is an anti-climax for any web user, let alone a busy hiring manager or recruiter. And certainly don’t make that link the first case study on your online portfolio. (You’ll be shocked at how many people do.)

Figure 9-5
‘Under construction’ pages like this were commonplace during the earlier days of the web. They were not a good idea even then.

Projects that Never Deliver

Projects that never deliver are a tough break. A friend once worked on a project for over a year only for their employer to acquire a competing solution before anything launched. The project was closed down as a result. This isn’t an uncommon occurance in the corporate world. The likelihood is that the in-house project was a backup plan for if the acquisition didn’t go through.

In situations like this there may still be value in explaining what you did. Even though the project didn’t launch, a robust testimonial from your employee or client may act as the case study result.

Finally, accept a virtual hug from me. You probably need it.

In this chapter

In this chapter we learned:

• You can supplement a limited work history by attending courses, participating in hackathons, undertaking work for non-profit clients, or making up projects. It is best to avoid design contests or other speculative work.

• If you are looking to transfer into UX design from a different role, you can write up past projects and highlight transferable skills.

• Designers who have worked on a single project for a long time can break their past work into multiple case studies to demonstrate variety.

• Breaking a Non-Disclosure Agreement with your portfolio is unwise as hiring managers may consider you untrustworthy and unprofessional.

• Anonymising work rarely meets the requirements of a Non-Disclosure Agreement as the client name can often be identified from the designer’s career history.

• If you are presented with an NDA, you should review it and ask for amendments if necessary.

• You may be able to share more than you think within the terms of a NDA. Information that a client has already made public may often be reused. This may include press release content or your job description. Summarising your design process without any of the commercially-sensitive detail may also be possible.

• If you wish to include a ‘difficult’ project, remember that your personal satisfaction is secondary to what you achieved. Emphasise the client benefit.

• If you need to include older work, remove date stamps and any artefacts that look dated. Emphasise timeless design techniques.

• A case study on work currently in progress is acceptable if you still have a story to tell. Delivering a ‘Coming Soon’ placeholder in an online portfolio is an anti-climax.

• If you are unfortunate enough to work on a project that never delivered, seek a strong testimonial to use as the result instead.