For designers, it is always “critical” to have their portfolio up to date. Sadly, more often than not, it goes in the same bag with other things that we should be doing but are not, like eating 8 ounces of greens and doing 20 minutes of daily physical activity.
Sometimes I get my ducks in a row and attempt to do these things. I have faced some challenges, like, how much spinach I should buy or what I should include in my portfolio as a product designer.
Pictures from a plane
Lately, I have been asking myself how efficient the format of a case study-based portfolio is for my current role. It has worked in the past, no doubt, but how effective really is it? The golden rule of “quality over quantity” almost always translates into high-altitude snapshots of entire projects. The case study often promises depth but rarely delivers, and it makes sense because these are usually projects that take months or even years. Going deep would mean longer (and probably very tedious) reports. My current portfolio is like that and is quite a common thing to see around.
On top of that, the standardized structure of the case study is not kind to a big portion of my work as a product designer. I keep repeating product designer, but this likely applies to any designer who —besides building artifacts, from flows to high-definition mocks—spends a lot of their time defining the experience strategy, setting up and measuring goals, reaching consensus with the team, etcetera. A person that leads projects and makes decisions. I will continue using the label “product designer” because that is my case, but it can be anything, from an individual contributor to a manager.
Without all those extra activities and sometimes ephemeral and hard-to-document tasks, it would seem that I am still doing the work I did years back when I did not have that level of ownership and responsibility. Yes, some of those things contribute to mocks or flows, but the real core of the effort happened in that video call or in that backlog thread, and the mock does not tell that part of the story.
The many jobs of a portfolio
I mentioned before how the portfolio might be helpful to check some boxes and put you in the position to get an interview. Nowadays, that interview is usually followed by a portfolio review, which is more complicated than just navigating through your portfolio telling the same story you wrote for the website. In fact, if you do that, there’s a big chance you will not get hired. Portfolio reviews are aimed at being more open and talkative. You have the opportunity to add more nuance and detail, but you are also time constrained and probably want to engage in conversation with your audience.
Is that conversational aspect that can help surface all those nuances that are so common in a role as a lead. Details that show how a candidate thinks. Elements that are hard to put in a text without tons of paragraphs of context. Storytelling skills come into play here. How to add details without making a presentation dense, hard to follow, or simply dull.
The original portfolio is then an initial source of material, and more work will need to be done to build a presentation. They share material and can help each other, but they are not the same. A self-sustained portfolio makes a dense and boring presentation, and a portfolio presentation is nothing without the actual act of presenting.
More stories, please
Everything I have just said explains why we still have case studies in our portfolios. They are supposed to be, at most, these aforementioned high-altitude snapshots. In a hiring process, they quickly lose relevance and give way to other activities that are better at showing who we are as people and professionals.
However, I have seen the tendency to modify the framing of those snapshots. I have seen “case studies” that are more focused and short. Not all of them follow the same structure and might be centralized around different aspects of the role. Some might be about process and culture, others about objectives and data. This apparently might go against the golden rule of “quality above quantity,” but you might argue that they can offer more quality in larger quantities at some point.
Most of these small but meaty overviews are done following a blog format. Any structure you might want to impose on them must be very vague because of the different nature of each one. Also, it is done by people not that interested in showcasing work for recruiters but are excited to show themselves as thought leaders, voice their opinions and share knowledge. It makes sense under the previous assumption that we made that headhunters only care about the existence of a portfolio, not its content. Furthermore, creating these pieces can also be helpful to share internally with other teams, share knowledge between designers or promote the design practice inside a company. With this in mind, the purpose behind this idea is not to have a portfolio that gets you more attention from recruiters but is helpful in more than one way for more than one type of audience.
I actually have seen this type of case study often with developers. It is common for them to focus on the nuances of a challenge. Developers have to follow a definition of done, so the process of reaching that state is more important to understand the professional doing it than the final product, which is what everybody expects.
I don’t want to update my portfolio
This last part about having a multipurpose portfolio resonates with me because I am interested in something other than gathering the attention of recruiters. I began this article by saying that it is critical to have an updated portfolio, but that is an idea that I dislike; the concept of always being on the lookout for the next position. I prefer to be economically prepared for inconveniences and constantly work on growing, but with the main focus on my current job. Also, recruiters are dreaming if they think most senior designers working full-time have up-to-date portfolios.
Nevertheless, it is still a good idea to create these pieces when they are still relevant and you have fresh knowledge and easy access to the information and materials. Sometimes it is counterproductive because some companies might want to avoid employees sharing new projects for many reasons.
So, this idea of smaller, more informal, focused case studies with topics that include different aspects of the practice resonates with me. Can I create a portfolio like that? We will see.