Portfolio case studies: The opening act

We’re looking for portfolios that show a balance of process, craft, and a clear understanding of the user and the business. Start by creating 2–3 case studies of shipped work that you want to be hired to do. 

For each case study, create short sections that discuss the user problem, business goals, research, sketching, iterations on the design work, final shipped work, and project impact and metrics if possible. We’d also recommend noting the role, responsibilities, who else was on the team, when you did the project, and the project duration.

Think of a portfolio as a balance of show and tell. By “show,” have images of sketches, concepts, collaboration with stakeholders and cross-functional partners, iterations of screens, and visual design. By “tell,” describe the user problem, business goals, research, and why those led to the design decisions you made. 

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Portfolio presentation: Telling your story

The art of presentations is all about storytelling. For a product designer, it’s the story of a project that best represents the type of work they want to continue to do.

To make the most of our time together, we ask that you prepare a portfolio presentation of two projects that you are proud of and have recently completed. Plan on about 45 minutes of presentation, and then 15 minutes for discussion.

To showcase your work and storytelling skills in the best light possible, please prepare a presentation deck, as opposed to presenting directly from your site or design files.

We’re looking to better understand your design process and would like to see slides covering insights, prototypes, iterations, to high fidelity visual design. Demonstration of craft is important to show at all levels of product design.

Here’s a sample presentation outline to help tell the story of your product work. These work well as individual slides.

1. Who I am (max 2 mins) 

• Something about yourself
• Your journey so far as a product designer
• Your preferred pronouns, if you’d like to share

2. Case study 1 (20 mins): 

• Role, responsibilities, project duration
• User problem
• Business goals
• Users
• Approach to problem solving (see below for more details)
• Workflows as flow diagrams or white-boarding
• Qualitative and/or quantitative research: sales feedback, competitive analysis, executive insights, anecdotal feedback
• Connection between research insights to design decisions
• Concepts and design iterations
• Visual design
• Approach to launching (experiments, learnings, iterations)
• Impact (success metrics, OKRs)

3. Case study 2 (same information as above) (20 mins)

4. Visual design examples (Optional) - If your case studies don’t show much visual design and craft, share examples that you personally worked on of icons, illustrations, motion, or any other ways you’ve found to show visual delight in experiences.

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Share how you approached problems

We also want to understand how you approach tackling design challenges, so take time during the presentation to talk about how you:

• Break down the problem into its most important parts
• Consider various design methods
• Incorporate empathy and user pain points
• Work within design, technical and business constraints
• Solve business problems with your design work
• Overcome challenges and obstacles
• Generate ideas and design directions
• Work with cross-functional team members
• Persuade others of the soundness of your decisions
• Handle complexity, such as implications across other parts of a platform or cross-platform
• Measure outcomes, based on research or testing
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Less is more

Now that you have the outline, here’s are some final tips for each slide: 

• We suggest you include relatively little text on each slide. No need for paragraphs; this is distracting to the interviewers if you’re reading something different than what’s on-screen. 
• Make sure that interviewers can see the screens you include on your slide. We are evaluating visual design and interaction details so we need to see the UI elements on-screen.

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Practice and embrace feedback

The best way to do well in portfolio presentations is to practice and embrace critical feedback. Try doing your presentation out loud, recording it, and watching the recording (yikes! But you can do it!). Or present to a friend, trusted co-worker, mentor or mentors on ADPList.

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Want to join our table?

If you love solving complex problems for some of the most passionate and relatable customers you’ll ever meet, and want to work with a close-knit, collaborative team then get in touch.