I recently was asked by a student what they should put in their UX portfolio.

This is closely related to the question about UX interviews.  Many UX interviews, both research and design, start with a portfolio review.

For a research portfolio review, I want the researcher to answer the following questions about a project that they worked on:

• What were the research goals of the project?
• How did they determine the research goals of the project?
• How did they select the research method that they did?  (Note that “we were told to do a usability study” is a completely valid answer to this question.)
• What did they learn in the course of doing their research?
• How did they share the results of their research with the team?
• What questions were raised by other stakeholders about the research or the results?
• What action was taken based on the research?
• Throughout the research process, who did they communicate with, and how?
• Looking back on the project, what would they do differently, and why?

For a design portfolio review, I look to answer similar questions:

• What was the user need that the designer was trying to meet?
• What design ideas did they try as they went through their design process?
• How, and from whom, did they gather feedback about their designs?
• What changes did they make to the design as the project progressed?
• Throughout the design process, who did they communicate with, and how?
• How did they share their designs with others?
• What design trade-offs were made?
• What is the difference between the design and what was delivered?  Why do those differences exist?
• Looking back on the project, what would you do differently, and why?

These questions scale to the experience of the researcher or designer.  For a student who has limited experience, perhaps working on a project for a semester that might not ever get delivered, will answer these questions differently.  They might not even have answers to some of these questions.  For someone with a lot of experience, I’m much more interested in how they balanced trade-offs, communicated their design, and ensured that their design got delivered.

I’m not necessarily looking for a beautiful design or world-changing research.  When evaluating a candidate’s portfolio, I’m most interested in how their work fit into the work of the rest of their team and how they worked with the team.  Creating beautiful designs that never get shipped is not the mark of a great designer.  Conducting amazing research that never gets acted upon is not the mark of a great researcher.  Being great at user experience is about the user experience that actually gets into users’ hands.  As Steve Jobs said, real artists ship.