Live Design Portfolio Review with Florian Bölter

Summary

Florian Bölter, a product designer and mentor, hosts a live design portfolio review focusing on constructing engaging and effective design portfolios. He emphasizes the importance of storytelling, showcasing unique experiences, and the importance of qualitatively highlighting results in one's work. With insights into industry trends and the art of balancing narrative with visual content, Florian provides a comprehensive guide for early career designers looking to make an impact.

Highlights

• Florian Bölter provides live design portfolio reviews emphasizing key elements that make a portfolio shine. 💡
• Personal narrative: Highlighting the importance of integrating unique background experiences into your design portfolio. 🤔
• Key takeaway: Ensure your portfolio effectively communicates your process and results, balancing between narrative and visual content. 🎨
• Practical tips: Use screenings and mockups effectively to tell your story visually. 🖼️
• Emphasizing results, even if qualitative, is crucial for showing the impact of your work. 📊
• Real-world application: Avoid unnecessary padding in portfolios, keep content concise and relevant to your audience. 🔍
• Future trends: Advise on staying savvy with current tools and methodologies to stay competitive. 🚀

Key Takeaways

• Always tailor your portfolio title and content to stand out and catch a potential employer's eye, especially highlighting any unique skills or experiences. 🎯
• Balance is key when explaining your process and showcasing your final products; too much of either can be overwhelming. ⚖️
• Adding a bit of personal brand, like background or quirky details, can make your portfolio more memorable. 🎨
• Results speak volumes – showcasing the impact of your work, even qualitatively, can set you apart from the competition. 📈
• Being honest about your gaps and using educational time as leverage can benefit your narrative to potential employers. 🕰️

Overview

Florian Bölter delves into the nuances of crafting an exemplary design portfolio by reviewing examples from budding designers. With a background in both product design and leading as a mentor, Florian advocates for a balance of storytelling and impactful design in portfolios.

Through his live review session, Florian highlights the importance of showcasing a designer's unique strengths and experiences while maintaining a clear and engaging narrative. From emphasizing results to using visual aids effectively, the session covers all crucial aspects of building a portfolio that stands out.

The presentation also touched upon current industry trends, advising early career designers to become generalists familiar with evolving tools and methodologies. By understanding these market needs and adjusting their portfolios accordingly, designers can enhance their job prospects.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:00: Introduction and Overview The chapter opens with an introduction by Florian, a product designer at Juro, a legal technology company. He briefly talks about his role at Juro and his involvement in running 'Open Doors,' a hub for junior or early career designers, aimed at creating more agreement in the world.
• 02:00 - 27:00: First Portfolio Review: Aran The chapter titled 'First Portfolio Review: Aran' focuses on providing assistance to individuals looking to secure their first job and to succeed in it. The speaker has a newsletter that they encourage listeners to subscribe to. This newsletter offers job listings, a useful article, and a weekly portfolio review featuring examples from early career professionals. The chapter anticipates a portfolio review session that will showcase these examples.
• 27:00 - 52:00: Second Portfolio Review: Dua The chapter focuses on a portfolio review session, highlighting three selected portfolios. The aim is to identify areas for improvement while appreciating aspects that are done well. It encourages the audience to draw inspiration and make connections with the content.
• 52:00 - 68:00: Third Portfolio Review: Nida The chapter details the format of a third portfolio review session led by Florian with Nida's input. The session is designed for sequential presentation of portfolios, with opportunities for attendees to engage via a public chat for questions. Post presentation, a broader discussion about industry and design takes place. The facilitator handles technical needs like screen sharing and coordinates the flow of the session.
• 68:00 - 87:00: Q&A Session In the 'Q&A Session' chapter, the participants are reviewing their portfolios. One of the members confirms that the display looks good to them and queries if everyone else can also see it, making a light-hearted remark about the obligatory nature of the question. They mention the option to alter the camera layout, which could potentially enhance the screen visibility. The speaker then makes an interesting note about 'disappearing' and proceeding with the next steps, indicating a focus on technical adjustments to enhance participation in the session.
• 87:00 - 90:00: Closing Remarks In the closing remarks, the speaker discusses needing to manage the presentation flow by transitioning between different screens and mentions the challenge of taking questions in real-time. The focus is on reviewing three distinct portfolios, each commendably crafted in its unique style. The speaker emphasizes the importance of staying on schedule to ensure that each portfolio receives adequate attention and a segment for queries is allocated after each review.

Live Design Portfolio Review with Florian Bölter Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 uh dor maybe you just want to introduce yourself first before we kick off yeah you already already introduced me quite well there I'd say but yeah hello everyone uh my name is Florian I'm a product designer at a company called Juro uh which is a legal Tech trying to make the world agree a little bit more and yeah and as um William said I'm also running open doors which is a um Community well more more like a hub for uh junior or early career designers
• 00:30 - 01:00 trying to help you um trying to help you kind of land that first job and also succeed in it uh I have a newsletter which I very much would love you to subscribe to uh bring you latest jobs and um at least one useful article and also a little portfolio review every week showing you kind of like nice examples of portfolios of early career portfolios that you hopefully can relate to uh which I think we'll also be doing tonight where I'm going to go and show
• 01:00 - 01:30 you three portfolios that I've picked um that I think you know obviously we'll have some room for improvement and we're going to touch on those things but also I'm going to show you uh a lot of things that are done quite nicely uh where you hopefully can take some inspiration from um and kind of hopefully kind of relate to to what you're seeing and hearing um yeah that's it
• 01:30 - 02:00 awesome thanks so much and just in terms of the format as I said at the start so Florian's going to present each portfolio one after the other and then if you've got any questions just drop them in the public chat I'm going to be in the background and then I'll reappear after each portfolio and at the end we can have a discussion more generally about the industry and design um so Floren let's see if we can get the screen share working first of all sure and then once that's up and once that's up and going I can then disappear into the ether and uh I'll leave you with the
• 02:00 - 02:30 the portfolios yeah sure let's take a look that looks quite good to me awesome can everyone see that obligatory question okay I can also change the camera layout too maybe that's a little bit better this down small we get a bigger screen okay I'm going to disappear uh laan all right let's do it uh let me just move you over here um guys I guess
• 02:30 - 03:00 want to move you guys over into my other screen so that is working a bit better for me all right like I said I won't really be able to take questions while I'm running through this but um we'll try to like pause a little bit after each portfolio to uh yeah to do that and I'm also G to try to stay on time somewhat so we can like go through all three of them they're quite different I would say um but all very very well done in their own way um like as a majority
• 03:00 - 03:30 but they all also have things where I think you know you can always improve a little bit or you know aspects where they're maybe not necessarily too strong um but one thing I want to point out if is that your no portfolio is perfect you have not seen one my own is certainly very far from that and it's not about being perfect it is about positioning yourself positioning yourself well and
• 03:30 - 04:00 showing your work in a very effective way if you if you hit those two things your portfolio is going to land you're going to land interviews you're going to be able to repeat that end of story so now that's easiest being like set than Buton obviously and that's why a lot of people come to me a lot of people are here tonight to learn a little bit more about how you can achieve those things so I'm trying to like view all of the portfolios through that lens a little bit uh and yeah but let's start in so
• 04:00 - 04:30 our first one that we have here is Aon Kim I think she's from the US uh yeah pretty sure she is and um I've reviewed her portfolio a little while ago I think on the newsletter even uh must have been a couple months ago um and when I was booked for the session I was immediately thinking of her because I think she she has a really nice portfolio that is like super clean and shows you that it doesn't have to be a lot you don't don't
• 04:30 - 05:00 have to overload your portfolio you don't have to use bright colors um also to like let personality shine through or something like that although I have to say that Iran actually did if you can take a look at this little nice interaction that is like a little bit of candy when you start looking at a portfolio um and it's also a very nice way of Storytelling where she's like basically um moving through three different things that are relevant about her that also referen the things that
• 05:00 - 05:30 you can see always change um here in the uh in the normal view uh and also a little hint on like you know to make sure people don't don't miss this and I think this a very nice way of of like adding micro interactions you will see micro interactions a lot um tonight I think um not all portfolio have them to the same degree but I can really say that in 2025 m interactions are like the
• 05:30 - 06:00 the little spice you can sprinkle on your portfolio when the foundation is solid already to really like bring it to the next level I will not Rave or try to Rave too much about them because obviously um if your work's not cutting it uh or or like other structural things are not there in your portfolio uh they're not going to help you uh and and they also should always have a purpose that's super important
• 06:00 - 06:30 like in this case it is to kind of tell a bit more about her personality here and there's actual content hidden behind these interactions so it's worth doing that but if you are just like adding like a little mascot that you can like I don't know click and then it spins or something that can if that fits into your brand and into your overall kind of like style that can still be a nice touch but very often I think that um interaction should be placed on items
• 06:30 - 07:00 that are already going to be interacted with anyway and another example and that is and let's continue here is uh for example the uh the portf the case study previews you can see there's like a little interaction when I move here on Hover same here those could be a little bit more let's say uh ambitious um I think this one is actually the nicest where it like turns around but like I'm
• 07:00 - 07:30 not getting much from these like it's it's not like I'm now seeing more I'm learning more information or I'm I'm going to uh I don't know I'm visually impressed by these I think what she did up here is way more impressive than than what she did with these case study previous but again it's fine sometimes just a little bit of movement already goes a long way because it just feels a bit more engaging and that's fine now before we dive into our actual work let's just like take a quick look at what she has here like we like I said
• 07:30 - 08:00 it's like super super simple there's not a lot of fuss on this page it's purely focused on her work there's a little bit about her but really just enough to make it scannable and then she has a dedicated about me page which we might get to a little bit later where she's like you know um talking a bit more about herself now what's in focus is the work and while I said like I think the presentation here is good I think there
• 08:00 - 08:30 is there's a couple more things she could do to um to highlight the work even better or to make the work more interesting to actually click on so for example when it comes to this one the intu one based on the screens I can tell what it is and it sounds kind of interesting well tax return is not that interesting but like it it it kind of like it makes me want to learn a little
• 08:30 - 09:00 bit more about like what she's actually what she actually did for this project um but this one is too small the Trudy one is too small to actually see what this is really about there are some texts down here saying geni generative Ai and web design and the year it was done but still I have no idea what this is so I'm not going to click on that one at least not as the first item um and sometimes you want to guide people towards clicking a certain case study
• 09:00 - 09:30 first um this very individual uh depends on a lot of factors but just generally you want to make sure that everything you have is inviting to click on and this one isn't necessarily so what can you do first of all bigger visuals show something that actually tells the user like what is this about that shows like a certain piece of UI or something um for example she has these task cards here that is in combination with project management telling me quite a lot
• 09:30 - 10:00 already I think I have an idea what this is about so this is done better uh and here again she has a Mobile screen for a golf social network um that is also kind of enough to understand what's going on same with the taxes but with Trudy not so sure so now there's one last thing you can do and we're going to see that maybe in one of the other portfolio I'm pretty sure yeah um like the case study titles she just titled them like with
• 10:00 - 10:30 the company or the product name into it Trudy vertex caliber refiner okay nice but you know for me that's actually secondary information what I'd like to learn here is what did you achieve what did you do what what was your project what was your thing about because she did not design into it she did not design whole of Trudy or Vertex or caliber well maybe for some that's true if there are study projects like the
• 10:30 - 11:00 golf Network I think but like normally you work on certain parts of a product so I want to know what part is about and maybe what you achieved if you already have some real world uh world examples in there so that's definitely something where you can um make your case studies more inviting so now let's go in I've already talked quite a lot I think we can't get into this one because I don't have the password that was expected uh so let's get into this one instead so now this is what I would have expected
• 11:00 - 11:30 as the case study title enhancing the admin portfolio for improved usability or if you want to spin it even more impactfully you could say improving usability by enhancing an admin portal for a product that does this and that that is really like that would be really engaging and interesting to read as a case study title over here on the homepage because then I would really love to learn oh how did she do that how did she improve usability right now I
• 11:30 - 12:00 only know truly that's it not very engaging like I have to have an alterior motive to now click further which the normal users on your portfolio have the recruiter and the hiring manager those are your users they want to learn more about your work and what you did there so they are not going to stop here just because the title isn't good but if you you have to tell a story with your work and you can already start telling that story here by having a nice hook into
• 12:00 - 12:30 your story and that that is what I'd love to have here so I would have put that as the title anyway let's take a look so we have the standard kind of stuff that we um that we expect as an overview her role the timeline agency and a client okay and then some context um big nice headings with just enough information to understand what this is about um and also from a typography
• 12:30 - 13:00 point of view I think quite well done uh then showing a key visual again I think that's a good choice do not overdo it with these don't Drop Like immediately don't drop like five visuals here um that's not a time or place to do that so that's quite well done then the challenge again a visual to support although I'm not necessarily always like I do see how it connects but I'm not sure I can actually see the challenge in
• 13:00 - 13:30 there so um always be careful with that ideally the text the visual connect really nicely in terms of like the story you tell but I think that's okay we can get away with it by the way tonight I'm extra critical because I want to uh really highlight those little bits that I sometimes when when I do shorter portfolio reviews where I skip because they are not the most impactful thing you can work on right now and I'm trying to focus on those but tonight I'm going to be a bit more picky about stuff so
• 13:30 - 14:00 we've got some Discovery here um and this is by the way really nice so this is visual storytelling instead of going on in a uh like a lengthy paragraph about each of these three items which no one's going to read promise she chose to use a visual each and really like break it down with two lines of text by like what kind of key principles she's kind of
• 14:00 - 14:30 like going for you can do this in all sorts of sections in your portfolio one where I think this is even better done is for example in research when you have really like complicated results sometimes or really complex results and people break them down into chunks um that are visually presented like this with an illustration or just with like very big text so you can like easily understand the metric or the the kind of result without necessarily being uh you
• 14:30 - 15:00 know like overly detailed with stuff because that's not what people are looking for people are looking to scan your portfolio your case studies and all looking to go through in a kind of nice smooth way and you enable them to do that that way so yeah let's continue um this is some exploration first um kind of from the before and after um before and after is quite nice um if especially if you redesign stuff um however be
• 15:00 - 15:30 careful to really focus on stuff that is super impactful and also pointing out why your after is better or is like more impactful and drove better results because that is a very important part of it um I think uh Aran did that quite nice here because she is talking about that um if you want to do it in even even better way you could like annotate your after design for example to show kind of like the improvements right on the UI uh that's another way of like
• 15:30 - 16:00 really effectively telling what you have done to make this better okay let's scroll through a little bit more because we we we want to want to still talk about some other stuff now we've got an overview of the solution and here um I'd really like to see you know first of all this feels a little repetitive because parts of these screens I've already seen before um but I think the the most crucial thing that's missing for me is um
• 16:00 - 16:30 from everything that I know about this case study this piece of work got better because um the workflow for the person working with this Tool uh was a bit clunky and the workflow now got better and now what the best thing you could do is you could actually show me what that workflow what that user flow would now look like and how can you do that with a little video so you could uh record
• 16:30 - 17:00 yourself running through a prototype of this just essential flow nothing like Fancy no big interactions like I'm not asking you to to prototype the whole app or something but like the stuff that you worked on that's now better than before you can like prototype that in figma quite quickly usually and record that as a gif or as a video in here and then show me that in the end instead of like dropping free screens that are kind of without a connection and so that is
• 17:00 - 17:30 always something I like to see I see this quite often I have to say um not in R's portfolio right now but like in other portfolios and I'm pretty sure we're also going to see that tonight in other portfolios um but yeah I I'd love to see that and then there is a a visual thing I just noticed really quickly and I know that sometimes you cannot control this because sometimes you are bound by like a certain design system system or something especially if you work on a
• 17:30 - 18:00 real project on like with a real client or in your internship or something but if like you notice something around these icons here so both of these icons the first two are outlined icons outlined style icons whilst the delete icon is a filled icon and you can immediately see how like this filled icon has like such such more weight on the screen than these two icons that are outlined and another thing and I can't
• 18:00 - 18:30 zoom in here I think uh maybe if we open it in a new tab yeah maybe a little bit you can see that the line um the line um The Stroke width sorry of these two icons is different so this one has a a slightly bigger stroke and this one has a lighter stroke so either these icons come from different uh icon sets or they've not been properly scaled or something like that um and you can also
• 18:30 - 19:00 notice the same here with this Chevron icon and these this this menu here where those dots are not as thick as the stroke width of that Chevron and that's like like this is something a recruiter will never ever ever notice at least not consciously but a hiring manager especially if you're interviewing for product design role where visuals uh or UI design role even where visuals matter
• 19:00 - 19:30 uh they will immediately notice that and again there might be good explanation as to why that is um that is not on you but sometimes it might even be worth uh giving in ex like a disclaimer at the beginning for example like something saying um in this project I had to work with uh like Trudy design system that existed I was not able to force changes here due to constraints okay done deal if I read that and I see this I assume
• 19:30 - 20:00 it's not on you but if I don't you know uh I mean benefit of the doubt always but um and generally ir's portfolio I'd say is fairly strong so I probably would have still invited her even if the role was like slightly more visually minded but um you know like every little bit can like you know make your like make people less likely to invite here and that's why I sometimes am picky with
• 20:00 - 20:30 these things too all right so let's just before I wrap up for this portfolio now um let's just at least go through one more case study maybe let's pick the caliber one with the golf just because this is a mobile work um and we have looked at a web case study just before that um generally the same structure I appreciate that because um although I think your case studies can differ a little bit and every case study is also
• 20:30 - 21:00 different because you're telling a different story so they have to you have to accommodate other things like the overall structuring like how you deal with headings how you deal with uh you know kind of like layout that ideally should be consistent um unless you have like a super avangard portfolio which I would not recommend to you if you're still on early in your career because that usually goes wrong um and believe me I've I've tried myself to be a little
• 21:00 - 21:30 bit more edgy it did not work out I had to I I went back to having a simple portfolio anyway um I like to see that again visualizing um context a little bit with the help of icons here and these little cards breaking it up visually very nicely done I like that and also here a little illustration to help with like amplifying uh and and understanding the problem a bit better and here we go this is what I wished for in the other case
• 21:30 - 22:00 study actually seeing things in motion um that is really something um that I like to see um and that I that I really like where I think you know there is value in showing this uh if I want to be again super picky um don't do two screens that do separate things next to each other because it's like my eyes are bouncing between these two and I'm actually not really paying attention to either of them uh so just like separate
• 22:00 - 22:30 it out and like stack them on top of each other because we are usually um processing information from top to bottom we're also processing it from left to right but especially when things are moving it's easier for us to digest if we go from top to bottom rather than going from like left to right or right to left or whatever so uh that but that's uh again it's a little bit uh picky cool oh here we go research instead of
• 22:30 - 23:00 break like throwing numbers in like a normal paragraph which is always a little bit numbing um and overloading she just put three boxes here highlighted the big numbers or not so big numbers but like the the the numbers that are usually hard to grasp and just gave some context and made it super simple to understand great thing then here um I'm not a biggest fan of
• 23:00 - 23:30 personas in general but these I can accept that is that is a Persona where like it seems like it's boil down to the essential um and I'm not going to mind that one that one is good yeah again iconography here to to kind of like use together again here competitor breakdown I don't need the biggest spreadsheet I've ever seen to compare these like I know you found a lot more probably that is not good about a
• 23:30 - 24:00 competitor or that is good about a competitor but like this is I can digest that in a matter of 10 seconds and that's maximum I'm going to spend on it anyway so perfectly done um yeah that is fine I think this is a nice way it's like one visual to show like going from like sketches to Mid Fidelity uh fair enough uh I'm not the the biggest fan of scream dumps but like this one is quite
• 24:00 - 24:30 like kept quite small so I feel like um it's kind of fine uh done and then yeah we've got some development of the visual identity um it's always a bit difficult because um it's like it's sometimes it's lacking context on like why you made certain decisions very often however I feel like in a text she has like given a couple of pointers here that I think are are nice um and and so I I'm not
• 24:30 - 25:00 impressed by this like always but not just by her like generally but uh this is a way you can pull it off I think yeah and then um some exploration here um I would love to hear yeah after user testing like why you made certain changes that's quite important and then in the end prototyping the idea again don't screen dump just show me this I don't I don't care about this show me
• 25:00 - 25:30 the thing moving show me how it's going you know um in context and that's what I like so now one last thing exactly that I was missing in the other case study results so now you're saying I'm a junior I have fictional case studies in my portfolio only or I've done like one freelance project where I redesigned a website but we didn't measure anything how the hell am I going to get results well this is one way this is certainly not the same as saying
• 25:30 - 26:00 what I designed drove up revenue for a company by 20% no it's not the same but it shows that you're thinking about the impact of your work it shows that you care about that and also that you know how to measure something even if that is like a qualitative way which might not be the preferred way for to measure everything and also Iran also thought about potential kpis that she would measure which again shows intent shows
• 26:00 - 26:30 knowledge and shows that she just understands how important design can be for a business and so that is exactly what when hiring managers are looking at slightly more early career designers this is what they're looking for they are not looking for you to say I single-handedly saved a whole business with my design by improving the checkout flow and like saving a million dollars of money um that's not what they're looking for uh that's not even what
• 26:30 - 27:00 they're looking for in a senior design honestly uh you do expect to see more actual business results in senior designers case studies but um this is the perfect way to pull it off like this this like results wise I really love how she did that okay pause on this portfolio I'm G to keep it open just for now because I I want to wait for some questions so maybe William you can come back in like ask me a couple before I move on to the next one
• 27:00 - 27:30 okay I'm back um a couple of questions before I'm going to jump into the audience questions but um Floren just for context can you tell um whether the the people who are watching whether this is a kind of a junior level or is a mid level or what kind of portfolio are we kind of looking at yeah yeah she is pretty um Junior um so she uh did work as a as a designer um in let's say slightly different field um before
• 27:30 - 28:00 before moving on to like normal product design but her real product design Journey started in 2024 so she is pretty Junior um I would say you can see she she did a bachelor in Fine Arts and then uh you know leveled up in ux and UI design here uh and then uh I think went on for an internship and contract work for inter it um and yeah so she's like she's not straight out of school but she
• 28:00 - 28:30 is still very early in her career yeah absolutely and then a secondary question to that from my side is that because I know a lot of people are thinking about career change in the audience um is that uh this is a portfolio that would land on a hiring desk um when it when it came to the interview round would the portfolio be brought out again and would the candidate be asked to walk through the portfolio as presented so what's usually happening roughly at the second stage sometimes the third stage you're going to get uh the invite to a to a to
• 28:30 - 29:00 an interview that's called um portfolio review portfolio walkth through case study presentation something like that and uh that's exactly what you're referring to this happens almost almost in every interview cycle I would say however my personal recommendation is uh and this depends a little bit on your talking and interviewing style but my personal recommendation is don't actually show your portfolio in those
• 29:00 - 29:30 sessions rather Show a slide deck that can be very much based on your case studies but ideally is um is constructed in a way that you can talk through it because case studies are designed to be read in the like async right someone else you send you a link you go and read it on your own you decide what you read you you you're going to get the information but you can't ask me anything in a present ation someone can ask things someone can kind of guide you
• 29:30 - 30:00 towards certain topics and so you will want to keep it quite flexible and have a very very minimal slide Deck with like you know the basic story in there but you talking around all of these points uh in a way that you see fit in that in that particular interview so that's my recommendation for that um but I've also seen people successfully talking through their portfolio what you have to make sure of is to not just start reading it
• 30:00 - 30:30 out out loud because if you if you catch yourself doing that you know you need a SL Tech all right that's great advice um just gonna jump into the questions so there was one question that just came through in the public chat so um how Aaron's portfolio is constructed is it with a website builder yeah so we just took a quick look at the source code here little uh trick uh this is a framer portfolio so this was done with framer I person and I'm not sponsored by framer um but I
• 30:30 - 31:00 do recommend framer it is a great tool it lets you go from figma to framer quite quickly with the plin but even if you would do it from scratch in framer there are great templates and it's also not very hard to build from scratch because it feels very similar to figma there are some Concepts that are different around components and such but overall it's quite easy to get started and you can even get started for free the only downside that you'll have is
• 31:00 - 31:30 you'll have a and I think we're actually going to see that in a in a little bit uh you're going to have a little batch saying like made with framer down here and you can't use your like uh normal domain like Iran did here but you can set a custom framer domain for free uh and you can just use it and no one will bad an eye like no one cares about that little badge and the non-custom domain um as long as your portfolio is good no worries uh so so I recommend framer webflow is also a good choice um but I
• 31:30 - 32:00 think webflow has a steeper learning curve so if you're not familiar with any kind of coding like HTML CSS at least um you don't need to code there but you will need to have a certain understanding of how HTML and CSS work in order to be somewhat successful with webflow especially if you're building from scratch um there are other tools out there we could do session just on those tools to be honest um so I'm going
• 32:00 - 32:30 to cut it here but uh my recommendation is to actually use right thanks Lauren um jumping into a question in the Q&A which I think came earlier but I'm going to ask it Ivon was asking what's the matter with personas uh why uh why not showing them yeah cool so and I don't want to I don't want to say because I do know that you guys still having course material and and but
• 32:30 - 33:00 a lot of schools do and so I don't want I don't want to talk too badly there but my personal opinion is that P personas are rarely if ever found in an actual real life kind of work environment so if you have a a company that has a very very very high ux maturity and has a very dedicated and well-built out research team you might have some actual really really great
• 33:00 - 33:30 personas once in my life I've seen a really great example of personas out in the wild and an actual business I don't remember the name of the business right now it's a UK UK based company that deals with um like Testament and stuff like online I I forgot how that what they're called but they did a really really good iteration on personas and it took them
• 33:30 - 34:00 um close to a year to do these personas and to actually have personas that have real insights in them about actual users and what they need uh because there's so much Nuance to this and the way that we do personas for case studies in on junior level is you know we're just imagining someone like this is purely fictional and yes our case studies are often purely fictional so it's not that bad but the thing is they are still
• 34:00 - 34:30 redundant because in in most real business contexts they are not relevant and so every like nine or eight out of 10 hiring managers are going to scroll past your personas and not bad an eye this is a nice solution what Aran did here because it's it's breaking down absolutely simple information that is probably still imagined and
• 34:30 - 35:00 therefore you know not necessarily the best guidance but it is you know you're not making me read a whole brief on a person that doesn't exist and doesn't actually have impact on the work that I'm going to do uh this is just giving me the absolute essential and I can live with that and it's nicely presented but that's not why I I said that for yeah hopefully that gave an answer maybe one more yeah I'm just there's one question
• 35:00 - 35:30 which I'm just going to post a blog article to so I know that we've got a very varied audience this evening at different stages too so I'm just posting a link uh for one question in the Q&A the difference between ux and product design uh for any more general questions do also check out the career Foundry blog because we go into more detail about some of the more um entry level topics um also salaries and stuff so do check that out and Flor I I am mindful of the time so maybe jump into portfolio two and then I'll get back to the questions yeah by the way no worries if we
• 35:30 - 36:00 overshoot or like a couple minutes I'm I'm there yeah okay cool let's continue with D I hope I'm not butchering her name because uh this letter is not native to my language uh to my to my mother and so uh I really hope that I I'm not butching this this is a quite different uh portfolio and I just like in my u in the corner of my eye I saw a question around do do we have to have a portfolio of picture of
• 36:00 - 36:30 ourselves in our portfolio you don't you don't necessarily have to um I think if you have an about page it's nice to have that there and just to kind of like give a face to it for the people that like to explore more about you because I feel like they were deliberately going to learn more about you so maybe just show them who you are um but like like do did this here on the on the homepage that's
• 36:30 - 37:00 not necessary absolutely not um it's okay if you do it but it's not gonna it's not going to do anything for you like in a positive or negative way I think well negative You could argue about there is like uh discussion around bias um um you know all sorts of biases really um that people you know sometimes have um and so often times it's said like you know be a bit more careful
• 37:00 - 37:30 rather than not but yeah again honestly I personally think it doesn't matter that much uh yeah okay let's dive in though um so we've got Dua here and she's introducing herself here as a user experience and product designer combines the background social science with design principles to create intuitive products so first of all I'm glad that duja has an introduction Iran didn't really have an introduction she she had these nice interactions to learn more about herself um which I think are a
• 37:30 - 38:00 nice substitute so I did not criticize her not having that kind of intro but um yeah now that we have one um I think this is a good start but there's like a lot more that du could do to really Elevate that one um what is great about it is so first of all she says what she is user experience and product designer although I would probably just pick one uh there's no harm in just saying a product designer even if you apply to user experience design roles uh because
• 38:00 - 38:30 um the recruiter that doesn't know that a product designer could work and use experience role and vice versa H yeah that it's kind of lost at that job um probably um because most of the time they are doing very similar things there is a so much overlap um and although those rules can be slightly different there's no no reason to exclude someone just because they put that one title on there not the other um so that's that I
• 38:30 - 39:00 would just for Simplicity and to keep it like as short as possible I would just pick one she combines a background and that I think is particularly interesting to many people here who are probably career Changers excuse me background is always great to mention you don't need to necessarily mention how much years of experience you have in your background or you know if you have multiple backgrounds you don't have to uh like
• 39:00 - 39:30 list them all but the most impactful one or you know just the one that you have is always great to mention because this is already priming the person looking at it to expect a maybe slightly different set of skills here because that is what we often bring from these other careers these backgrounds we bring skills that other designers might not have because they come from a very different angle or just straight out of school or something
• 39:30 - 40:00 and so background always great to mention and I think that's well done now she mixes that with design principles to create intuitive products this part is a little bit redundant and that is what I'd rework instead I would put a focus on the actual skills that duja excels in and du herself has has to know what that is uh like based on a portfolio I can make a guess but you know like and I'm just going to show you one other intro
• 40:00 - 40:30 that's not actually part of our review today um and that's Chen Chen because she nailed this absolutely nailed this um Chen Chen is a systems thinking product designer with a knack and here we go for ux research and product thinking especially in new and engaging Tech Systems thinking first skill ux research or knack for ux research second skill and produ thinking thir skill an amazing combination of skills that's
• 40:30 - 41:00 super relevant in current in the current market and in a very like smart way like condense into a sentence that that's that's what that's how I love see it um you don't have to copy that sentence but like bake this stuff into into your intro like that is really well done and I feel like du could still like add that little bit extra with like talking about her best skills like what she's really good at like doing um and then I think it would
• 41:00 - 41:30 be even better now let's continue we don't have that much time let's go into the work well let's first check what do we have here we have work oh we have quite a lot of work here um so we have like if I just count very quickly we have six case studies as far as I can see although two are marked as practice and then we've got a skill set and our tools and that's about it this piece not really doing much for you I I see
• 41:30 - 42:00 the intent but it's not it's not necessarily doing too much I think the presentation is nice I would probably move this to your about page um if anything um because for for the homepage I feel like it's cluttering a little bit um but I appreciate the effort um and I would not get rid of it entirely but again this is usually also something that is better extracted on your resume May too um but anyway um not to hold off
• 42:00 - 42:30 here too long so now let's take a look here we have six projects bit of a choice paralysis okay um there is two that are marked as practice so now what you can easily do to say okay I have this stuff where I did dat UI design or ux challenges here and I want to show this I don't want to get rid of it but I also want to put focus on on the actual case studies that I did on actual kind of like fully fletched stuff you can just create a new
• 42:30 - 43:00 section that is visually separated from your main work and then put that stuff there give it a new heading say you know kind of like practice or like you know sometimes people call it playground or fun or sandbox or something like that put that there and you know let it be there let it be available uh I promise you if you install anal you're going to see that not a lot of people will go there but some might and some might
• 43:00 - 43:30 actually find something they really like in there that kind of will make the difference uh to inviting you uh could be uh but your main effort should be here and she has 4K studies which is a sweet number three to four I always say um but like it seems like she has six and then only on second look I see oh this is not actually fully fledged Cas is is practice so like separated okay let's go into work here uh let's just pick the first so this is It's camper uh
• 43:30 - 44:00 I assume it's a camper van rental um company um again I've got an overview here I've got some visual Impressions here this is a little bit um busy um I think with the background and everything uh although I see like I I generally think the graphic is nice like having it cut off like this here especially with that illustration it's a little bit busy
• 44:00 - 44:30 I'm not sure I would have picked that as like the kind of cover picture but again me being a little bit picky maybe so we've got problem goals and the role broken down here uh with um with headings and some short text which I think is scannable enough I don't think it's as well done as in the other portfolio that we saw earlier by Iran uh but it's okay the highlighting here helps me like guide through I
• 44:30 - 45:00 automatically like jump from this to this to this just because of the highlighting um so that's great let's see if she keeps that up because you need to be consistent with that stuff um we've got a road map that I always think is not really super helpful so what you can do is you can have like a little menu like on the left or the right whatever you prefer or the top or bottom even that shows you where you are in the case study with like sections and then
• 45:00 - 45:30 you can like show the different steps but just like saying what you're going to do here feels a little bit redundant to me always you can save that space yeah and then she embedded the website here or the Prototype I think so you can do that but give it a little bit more space okay so this is like the height is not very high this is not the height that the usual browser window would have so I would I would definitely expect
• 45:30 - 46:00 that to be a bit bigger I can even see some people just like scrolling past that because they didn't realize that that's actually like I know it says scroll down here but like you know people don't read uh and there's no highlighting here or anything so I'm not sure this is gonna this is going to go noticed um and now I think we're we're we're like a little bit cluttered here we've got Discovery work and got like inser text here then we've got these boxes again uh with a different
• 46:00 - 46:30 kind of layout like here we've got some boltex and some arrows here we don't have that at all um this feel like this is hard to scan for me like I can't extract the information like quickly right now and then I've also got a quote down here that's like fairly wide um and very hard to read because of that so it's this is not ideally done done uh I think this can be broken down not more nicely just by giving it some space
• 46:30 - 47:00 maybe now we've got some research um visual um storytelling although a little bit too much text in my opinion this can be broken down and again these are personas uh not the biggest fan I just said why so yeah um the user Journey this makes sense this is a user Journey map I think is is fine to include in your portfolio because it can be scanned fairly quickly
• 47:00 - 47:30 and fairly well um even though it's like has free streams I still think it's it's okay to digest this sometimes I see like huge user Journey Maps done in fig Jam or something that I have to zoom in on to actually read don't do that like no one's going to do that no one's going to bother they're just going to scroll past and this is going to go to waste so don't do it we've got the highlighting again here I wonder why we didn't have that up here like it's uh that's like
• 47:30 - 48:00 from a from a hierarchy standpoint it's puzzling me a little bit um so I'm not sure there um and now we've got oh now we've got like two very very very big images side by side for the different kinds of profiles from like perspectives uh I appreciate the effort or the the the the intent here not the effort the intent um but I do think it's a little bit misguided because um that is so hard to
• 48:00 - 48:30 take in side by side it's so distracting to always kind of compare uh and you automatically start doing that and also there's very very little context as to what is different and why um I mean I from like I can by just taking it in I start to understand why for example this cont contact form is not not on the business perspective side but like you
• 48:30 - 49:00 you are basically requiring me to think and ideally I don't need that so um especially as someone who doesn't spend like I already spend uh thce or four like four times the amount of time that a recruiter or hiring manager will spend here so uh yeah and then we've got Solutions again this feels like I already got the solution so it feels uh you know um like competitive this is not
• 49:00 - 49:30 helping you at all just this is what I call a screen dump so I have no way of getting any information out of this this just shows that you did some work but I don't know what it what that work led to I don't know how good that work was even um there's nothing I could get from that so don't do that this is just wasting space in your portfolio really that you can use for other stuff we've got bran design here like if I'm critical again with the visuals um the iconography here
• 49:30 - 50:00 like there is definitely couple things wrong here with uh you know like things not being properly aligned in the frame then you've got uh um like Strokes being cut off here and being kind of like non-rounded While others are rounded there's a little bit wrong here visually so like from a visual perspective I definitely have like how I would maybe not invite D for
• 50:00 - 50:30 like a super visually focused role um but for like a ux rle I saw quite a lot of good material so yeah and it's fine you there can't always be the best at everything some people are more visually focused some others are more structure and like process focused fine or strategic uh perfectly fine so yeah uh and then again we've got a screen dump of a lot of screens some UI elements I recommend not doing that instead do what we did what we saw in oran's portfolio and uh show me a walk through as a gift
• 50:30 - 51:00 for video uh that I can just like watch and engage with what is nice is she actually links back to the actual website she did so she can sinere work implemented here live and that's always great because uh if you have real work at this stage of your career show it be proud of it link to it and make sure people can see it's actually live and being implemented so now we're going to cut this one short we saw one case study
• 51:00 - 51:30 we saw the general portfolio let's take some questions before I go into the last one um and and show show you some more so just here I'm also just going to change the camera back around so this side it's better to see us not to see this um we've got some quite vary questions coming through um some which are more General uh which I'll keep to the end and um one which came in earlier from Javid um should my resume on my
• 51:30 - 52:00 portfolio uh should my resume be put on my portfolio or just some information about me uh data privacy concerns uh yeah so difficult a lot of people do it uh I see it a lot and from um a pure hiring perspective or like hiring or recruiter perspective it absolutely does no harm uh on the contrary I personally when I like and that like
• 52:00 - 52:30 you have to see like I I have been involved in hiring and I've been a hiring manager um but most of the time when I look at portfolios I do it as a mentor so I have a slightly different view I very often click on your resume just to understand um what's your background but I did not I was not being sent your resume usually alongside the portfolio as a recruiter would so I do think it can be nice for people who are like you
• 52:30 - 53:00 know a little bit sloppy or lazy uh to just get access to your resume quickly like for recruiters and hiring managers if you have privacy concerns you can use a resume that has like some personal information like the phone number and stuff crossed out or like you know redacted or whatever uh because usually no one's going to work with the version they pulled from your portfolio and assume that they get all the details in there this is usually
• 53:00 - 53:30 more for context so if you want to like do a more anonymized version of your resume on your portfolio I think that's perfectly fine um obviously if you have like real privacy concerns you know I don't know you've got police involved and uh protection or something obviously uh please just don't do it because that's not worth it but if if it's just like you don't want your phone number flying around then uh yeah just take it out it's no problem I'm going to ask answer also ask one
• 53:30 - 54:00 other question which came through um which I think would be as well time now so uh Yan asked a little bit earlier um floran can you provide us advice on showcasing a website portfolio versus a PDF portfolio um how extensive should our portfolio be on the website compared to the pdf version some companies require a PDF portfolio even if we have an online version how should we approach this thanks yeah so B of A red flag reallya if they do but anyway I don't want
• 54:00 - 54:30 to it's it's not a definitive red flag but for me personally is one um so take it with a grain of Sal please um but to answer the question um so the fundamental difference between a PDF and a website I think are or is that the website if done well is much easier to navigate and to uh skip through um and to kind of like go back
• 54:30 - 55:00 and forth in um then a PDF is so I can go to the homepage I can go into work but I can also go back into the case studies right here I can switch to your about page from wherever I am in a PDF I can't do that really like I could like open this little side panel you have in your viewer usually to switch between certain slides in your PDF but effectively I think no one does that because um it's it's it's a minim like
• 55:00 - 55:30 it's a thumbnail view you can't see much so you usually don't do that and you have know like very little other ways in a PDF to navigate sometimes um some viewers let you use the structure and like the hierarchy of the headings sometimes uh but not even all viewers support that properly or show it properly so it's very Inc consistent so the main difference is and it's it can also be seen as a benefit because because the PDF and I do always recommend having a website by the way
• 55:30 - 56:00 like I do not recommend just having a PDF um it might depend with where you live and which Market you are applying but like I know in Germany that's sometimes happening with like requiring PDFs and again personally think it's a r flag but for example in the US you will be very rarely see that uh be seeing that I think um so always have a website but in the PDF one fundamental difference and it can be seen as a benefit is you are kind of in control
• 56:00 - 56:30 what the person sees first uh and what they see lost um the the the the cool thing here is that if you for example apply for a role where you know oh one of my case studies is a really good fit or really good example of showing how I'm a good fit for that particular role you can in your PDF portfolio just swap the pages to the start of your portfolio to make sure they see this case study
• 56:30 - 57:00 first and make sure that they see that what you think is going to show them a fit whilst here you cannot do that you can't like you could do it but it would take you a long time to set that up and you don't want that you don't want to waste your time on that honestly like it's not worth that but here if I go here and one of these is a good fit for the role you apply to and I'm looking I'm the hiring manager or something uh I'm just going to still pick what I think is most interesting so obviously
• 57:00 - 57:30 ideally like I said earlier with titles and stuff you guide people towards the stuff that is most interesting to them but still it is kind of like down to the person looking at it rather than is up to you and so that is a fundamental difference you should um you should acknowledge and then the last bit I'm going to say on that before we maybe you know I don't know even know if we can dive into the last one let me know William if we can like do a little bit more I'm willing to but um the last bit
• 57:30 - 58:00 on PDFs is keep them a little bit shorter cut any fluff because no one's going to review a 30 page portfolio keep it at like maximum 15 if possible um I know this will means cutting your case studies slightly shorter uh or even way shorter depending on how much you have on website you shouldn't have too much on website either but uh PDFs should definitely be shortened all right what's your take William do
• 58:00 - 58:30 you think we can let let's jump into portfolio 3 cool all right yeah I'm go for it let's go for it all right let's go okay that's Nita um so Nita has slightly more experience but not as a ux designer necessarily but rather as a front-end developer so she was a front end developer first and now is a ux designer and she obviously kind of Blends those things a little bit which her very bold headline makes super clear already informed by data and Power by
• 58:30 - 59:00 code like that's a nice way of like displaying your background and then she because that is a very short line she also goes into a bit more detail here which I think is a nice touch again she has like some some kind of you know interaction no it's not an interaction an animation here um perfectly fine to do that don't feel like you have to overload your portfolio with stuff like that but it's it's like a nice touch uh and kind of on brand um def kind of defining her visually a little bit I think this is nicely done
• 59:00 - 59:30 in general um but I like this intro this type this is for example a really nice way of how you can like break up your intro one big line that tells the most important and then a little bit of more context here slightly smaller uh maybe from like a visual perspective I would have like aligned this with this text but maybe I'm just boring there uh so yeah don't mind me there all right let's dive into our work and let's take a look so nid is doing exactly what I wished
• 59:30 - 60:00 the other two would have done and um wrote slightly or not not only slightly but actually way more interesting case study titles so this one is not so so good like a ux journey to the first client okay like that's very ambiguous but scaling di from 500 to 50K that's huge like that is a a lot of people and that tells me she worked on an actual product here and then also the
• 60:00 - 60:30 sub headline tells me she lets change in product strategy that led to a 100 times increase in user base and lower costs that is an achievement right like and again don't feel bad if you do not have experience where you can say something like that you can still talk about incre like enhancing usability or uh I don't know like you know simplifying something for users those are also things that are maybe not
• 60:30 - 61:00 as strong as these number games but they are still more like evoking and more engaging than just saying Spotify when you redesign Spotify app for example um because that's like oh yeah Spotify now what why we going to do with that and then she was also recognized by Google Play India here for her design or for for this app again that's like a huge achievement and so I think um that's
• 61:00 - 61:30 something you can kind of boast about if you have something like that uh in the titles before we go into the work let's just quickly look here so she did this really nice kind of like Journey from like you know um I think architecture uh and then code somewhere here and a 3D design to actually you know uh where she is now she has a very varied background I would say and it's even actually encompassing more than
• 61:30 - 62:00 what she's telling up here data and code um there seems to be more in here architecture 3D stuff so there's a lot that she does um you can do something like this uh I think this is a nice substitute for like an about page which I don't think niid actually has which is fine um uh but keep this a little bit shorter make this more scannable if you do something like this I think the timeline view is quite nice like you be able to scroll here this is so well done I'd say and also she links back to her
• 62:00 - 62:30 case studies here when she talks about achievements which is again a cool thing to do I like that um but yeah make sure to keep it a bit shorter and then ah she has other projects down here this is what I talked about with d if you have other work Set It Off visually um you can see like she has a micro interaction here and she has uh these kind of cards here uh showing like some other projects which I'm not going
• 62:30 - 63:00 to spend time on today but um this is this is nice to just show some other kind of work or ux work that maybe isn't fully fletched for example okay let's dive into something here so let's take a look okay this one's locked I should have known that but I think the second one isn't because I remember viewing that up front um so we've got this ring that is connected to an app and a website uh it seems uh yeah heart rate
• 63:00 - 63:30 variability uh and yeah goals here I would like this to be like broken into like sections ideally I think it's good to give an overview over what the product is but like jumping right in with the goal might be a bit too early so i' I'd love to to see that broken down the way this is um so nid doeses one thing here that um I sometimes see and I I won't say is bad um I personally like to see the results in the end but Nita decided to go all in with her
• 63:30 - 64:00 results and already talk about them up front if you have such strong results like she has I think I would even recommend it if you are like kind of scraping for results a little bit like you have a fictional case study you only have qualitative stuff keep it to the end um unless you really got like super impressive stuff there but usually you know if you don't have like you know you can tell like I increased user numbers
• 64:00 - 64:30 Revenue whatever I don't think it's worth already boasting about it here and then she has a testimonial in here that I would really position at the end um because this is a nice way to close a case study I mean it's obviously nice to build anticipation but I rather feel like you know show me what you've done first and then kind of boast um about how you've done um but you should both for sure um we've got some visual
• 64:30 - 65:00 here explaining kind of like how it went um I'm not sure what the up and down means here like this might need a little bit more context uh and feels a little bit lost uh but then again I really love what she did here uh she broke down like uh three kind of core issues and then backed it up nicely with super short quotes that are visually like standing out so I'm 100% sure to see and read these which is great um if
• 65:00 - 65:30 they help the story obviously I feel like these do but obviously if you have like I don't know quotes that where you're doubting they are really meaningful like obviously do not give them that treatment uh here I wonder what the what what what's going on with the layout like why is this over here well this is over here um this is a little bit weird and uh like from a visual standpoint kind of confuses me but um
• 65:30 - 66:00 yeah at this stage I'm I'm not closing your portfolio because of that now we see a user flow uh which yeah I think is commented on here uh that is nice actually because if you just have like a user flow you have to like compare what's like different here and why why why did she do that she gave the context so I think it's generally a little bit tricky to show these kinds of user flows especially if they are
• 66:00 - 66:30 complex I've seen things more complex um shown there um in the past um and I think it's a very tough thing to do usually it doesn't work out very well um but this I think is quite nice because she really pinpointed the exact moments in the user flow that she modified to make it better um so yeah visually uh this could be presented slightly nicer the image is cut off here on the right uh and feels like a little bit abrupt and also the contrast of this blue
• 66:30 - 67:00 against the background is kind of weird um but I'm taking it because this the like the key information is well done um I'd say now again like slightly visual help us here with the icons I think this is uh quite nice and helping to scan again um same here and then yeah also introducing that with a bold headline because this is SL different work I think it's also good what I don't like again is the way the visual is presented
• 67:00 - 67:30 here um it's like a screenshot um where the contrast of this background is very low with the actual background the the cut off here with the buttons and with this little black bar here it doesn't feel very elegant uh so in my opinion uh you know put this in a mockup um and just like you know present it in a slightly nicer way take five minutes to make this nicer is goes it can go a long way um yeah and then we've got some heat
• 67:30 - 68:00 maps that are at least annotated so I get some context but like nothing is talking about like doing that well there's some hot jar analytics mentioned here so I assume this might be the hot jar um heat Maps but because I I personally know that hot jaar has heat Maps but other people don't so uh feels slightly disconnected maybe there's a way of like tying that better to the text and now we've got the results again it's co it's cool to repeat that if they
• 68:00 - 68:30 are that impactful so yeah fine again they are visually kind of like um you know backed so um I think that's nice and then we've got a screen dump with screens that I have to tilt my head for so I'm not biggest fan of that um and also I can't really like they are out of context I don't know what is what here uh there's no explanation for many of these things those don't do much for you
• 68:30 - 69:00 I would say but then she has some learnings and actually I think um yeah they are not the best learnings I've ever seen but they are certainly touching on aspects that especially for early career designers are important cross functional team balancing timelines requirements constraints those are all topics very relevant when you hire someone early career um and so kind of talking about that you learned a lot about that although I would have loved to learn more what she learned uh it's
• 69:00 - 69:30 not the worst thing that did all right um there's obviously more to every portfolio we've seen I could talk more about every single one we could look at other case studies and such but let me here if you have any more questions about the actual portfolios or about um about anything in general uh we can take maybe I like five to 10 to just close it off nicely and uh yeah thanks so much Floren I think it's really useful to um go through all the
• 69:30 - 70:00 different portfolios and um especially I think if you're thinking about a uh career in design as well is that um and it goes without saying that the portfolio is one of the key things and also at career Foundry it's one of the key takeaways so I think the Fantastic thing is that you're building this portfolio and then as as we've seen and as you've explained you're presenting it to a hiring manager and that's how that's how you land a job let's jump into the questions because there were a couple of interesting ones which came through um and apologies if I pronounce
• 70:00 - 70:30 anyone's name uh wrong uh Nella was asking is it good to add small tags on the case studies thumbnails as seen in portfolio 2 with practices but with ux tags yeah interesting uh I like this okay and then there's also obviously the option to do like this so let's put it like that if you um can say something meaningful with these taxs yes let's take dua's case okay I don't
• 70:30 - 71:00 think those are really doing much it says product design it says redesign it says app design it says Feature Feature design um while I know what she means with this as a hiring manager or recruiter recruiter not at all as a hiring manager maybe no also not even really on hly um like all of all of this work is product
• 71:00 - 71:30 design so she could put this tag on all of them yes this is a redesign of an existing product this seems to be the design of a whole app and this seems to be the design of a feature for an existing app okay fair enough uh like that in that sense it fits the bill but like what kind of value am I deriving from that as a user as a hiring manager not a lot so in instead what I'd love to hear for example is um uh what kind of metric will you focus
• 71:30 - 72:00 on or what kind of um industry is this in also for example sometimes it is clear from the context but very often it isn't uh and if you know I'm working for a company that like I'm working for a legal Tech okay and if I go somewhere on a portfolio and I see a legal Tech case study or a case study in a field that is kind of adjacent to to Legal Tech then I am more interested but help me understand that it is quicker so I think
• 72:00 - 72:30 what nid did um is slightly better but still not hitting the nail on the head there uh she's more talking about the actual contents of her case study so if you want to say something with something like a tag say something meaningful that helps the person evaluate which case study to First Look at based on what they are looking to see if you can do that do it if you don't know how to do that or if you uh feel
• 72:30 - 73:00 like your work is like very similar for example and there isn't too much difference don't do it never add clutter to these previews an image a headline a CTA to read um and potentially like a sub headline like here not more um you don't need more in these case study previews usually again tax optional only if they're meaningful cool thanks Floren uh another question that came through from Yasmine was um what's
• 73:00 - 73:30 the balance to strike between explaining the process versus sharing final product uh would you weigh more towards sharing the journey versus the end result yeah that's a good question so well as all like like all things in life you want to have a nice balance between the two um I I'm going to be honest when you become more senior you're going to you are going to gravitate more towards um
• 73:30 - 74:00 more towards the solution and like um end result part and less on process because having years of experience already is somewhat prove that you have established a process and that process is not your problem anymore as a junior that's not necessarily the case um many companies want to see how you work um as part of a value Val ating you and so having some process in there is certainly quite important however you do
• 74:00 - 74:30 not have to go for the Double Diamond strictly in your case studies some some because in reality that's not how it's going to happen you're not going to join a company and you're you're not going to go for the Double Diamond probably ever you're going to sometimes skip some research stages you're sometimes not going to do comparative analysis you're sometimes not going to build a prototype uh and you're sometimes not going to um you're not going to do low
• 74:30 - 75:00 Fidelity W frames um and that's fine um and so you know you can talk about your um process uh but do not like do not talk about your process for the sake of it talk about like craft a story that talks about how you got from A to B to C to D um in a nice and condensed way um and then you
• 75:00 - 75:30 know basically like highlight the process bits that are really worth highlighting um so if for example in research um like something really stood out and you you use a special methodology to get through that inside like it's worth highlighting that maybe but you do not have to uh talk about all the different research methodologies you've used to to to to get like the inside the fact that you did research that you arrived at certain insights is usually
• 75:30 - 76:00 enough for example um thanks Florian um let me just take a couple of more questions there's one which came in quite early on from uh Angelia um how do you best tackle the Gap in employment from the time taken out to go to school for ux design as in how do you explain it to I'm assuming that might be like a career break or a Time taken out to do a
• 76:00 - 76:30 program or a course yeah uh so I mean the the course time itself you shouldn't have to explain right like you you're you are learning something new and if some sometimes people like I think Nita did this let's check her resume I think she went back to University actually after having started a job like already or having worked on stuff already yeah I think she she went to like she worked as a ux designer in India until
• 76:30 - 77:00 2021 and actually as a design associate before that um here but then she started an MS uh yeah a Mes in computer science in 2021 and finished that in 2022 and only then again went like back into ux design uh and that is simply time you you you you do learn stuff you you it's education it's the same as your normal university time that you might have
• 77:00 - 77:30 might already have in the past on your portfolio uh and no matter what type of education you go through like if it's you know a course program like career Foundry or uh an actual University uh graduate um course or something it doesn't really matter obviously the time that you then spend after graduation to um your next employment that's slightly different so one warning here do not just put freelancing in
• 77:30 - 78:00 there without the ability to mention any meaningful projects you've worked on a lot of people do this to fill that Gap however very often this is doing more harm than good because it just you know hiring managers can tell this from a mile uh that that that is you didn't actually have any freelance projects you were maybe looking for some but didn't find any or something um but and then
• 78:00 - 78:30 you know you you won't have anything to show for it um and it's not just going to be counted as experience uh that sadly the market is too picky for that so um do not do that um kind of be honest look for projects to work on maybe make them up yourself uh very happy to do an event on on that too by the way like kind of like bootstrapping your own projects to kind of like Kickstart your experience um because
• 78:30 - 79:00 I've certainly have done that and have guided others uh in doing it um but like yeah be honest around that really but again your education time should not be something you should have to explain a lot um really because you know if I go to school you can do it part time I know um but it's significantly harder takes longer and this stressful so if you have the option to do it for time and you did that there's nothing you should explain that yeah cool maybe one more yeah let's
• 79:00 - 79:30 take one more question let's go through um well there's actually one question which came through which I think um there was a sentiment which was running through a few messages um but maybe just Floren what's the snapshot of the industry at the moment because you know we're looking at Port FiOS um what is the job market like for design at the moment and what are the challenges and
• 79:30 - 80:00 what are the opportunities just your quick kind of overview of what's going on at the moment yeah cool yeah that's a good one to close on uh I wish it was a slightly more positive not to close on not going to say it's all it's all bad but uh obviously I I I just wish to tell you you know it's it's all nice and sunny out there right now uh that's definitely not the case I think most of us know that already um it shouldn't be big news but it is getting better again
• 80:00 - 80:30 uh we're seeing more roles and like I run open doors right so I ran open doors for two years now um and what has always been there is the job board where I only post Junior jobs um exclusively there's no job on there that requires more than two years of experience uh or any experience at all um and so I've I see how many jobs I get like I I get to post on that job board every week and they have definitely been
• 80:30 - 81:00 increasing um especially the dedicated Junior jobs they have been increasing um and just generally also the normal kind of like roles where maybe they are not necessarily looking for junior but Al they are open for junior they are increasing it's not like it's skyrocketing or anything it's not like I'm going to say in October we're going to be back in Wonderland and everything's going to be fine everyone's getting a job if they you know no matter how how good that portfolio is no that's not like I don't think we're going back
• 81:00 - 81:30 to we're going to go back to magical times but we are definitely seeing increase like a healthy kind of like restoration again um we see less companies laying off uh overall although it's still happening sometimes uh but we're definitely seeing less um Al fully depends on Industries and such but uh yeah and uh I feel that it's slightly getting slightly better what I have to also say though is that overall still
• 81:30 - 82:00 the design industry um has a bit of a difficulty with like fostering new Talent um a lot of companies default to just hiring a senior just because they know they don't have to spend time on like onboarding them for a very long time or like kind of like basically making a loss uh for a little while because a junior sometimes can't pull their own weight just yet um and and so um a lot of companies have gotten a lot more conservative with this
• 82:00 - 82:30 this will come back to haunt us in a couple of years promise you um I'm pretty sure that's going to happen when we run into a draw uh although there could be changes in the industry that will kind of like prevent this uh but I personally don't think so um but yeah anyway um not to go too far in the future um what the industry is looking for though and I think that it's quite agnostic uh to experience level is they're looking for generalists that can
• 82:30 - 83:00 work end to endend so not being focused fully on Research not being just focused on UI but like being able to work from the very beginning where you sit down with product manager and discuss what you actually want to work on right to the very end where you actually ship the solution not you ship the solution but like Engineers ship the solution and you also keep an eye on the metrics you care about like what's going on there and you are there for the full Journey um and
• 83:00 - 83:30 also people who for example uh toy with AI tools uh we are current kind of in a in a tool Revolution right now uh I would say where like um code has become a lot more accessible especially for designers and if you kind of like uh take an interest in that and start experimenting and building with that stuff and you have an ability to maybe show that your portfolio or something I feel that's something for example where you can like uh get a competitive
• 83:30 - 84:00 Advantage with um and and yeah there's more to this question again I feel like this is one where I could like just talk for an hour straight but I feel like I've uh I've probably summarized most of it yeah awesome thanks Floren my daughter's just crying in the background I can hear I'm just we're just going to wrap it up very quickly um but thank you um thank you so much for everybody who joined this evening uh
• 84:00 - 84:30 thanks Floren for presenting thanks for picking out three portfolios and uh for working through each one and showing um you know areas where you can optimize but also I think not to copy and paste but I think it gives um people a taste of which ways that you can take portfolios and also how to how to improve on the work that you've been doing um I'm just going to say a couple of things firstly do check out um Florian's platform um open doors so I'm sure he'll post a link there and Florian's also very active on LinkedIn so do follow Florian we will be sending
• 84:30 - 85:00 around a recording of this event tomorrow via email also with a couple of extra links for everybody so do uh check that uh we are currently offering a uh scholarship at the moment a partial scholarship of our design program so if you're interested in that um do book a call with the program advisor and if you want to talk about maybe jobs uh design jobs in your locality the career Foundry curriculum how career foundry's job guarantee works all about what projects you'll be
• 85:00 - 85:30 working on as part of your portfolio at career Foundry and feel free to to ask those questions um to our program advisers um and yes we've got some upcoming events too so if you go on the career Foundry events page um I think we have got some more design events or general career coaching events also about AI coming up we've got one in April with Sammy Gardner who is a career coach looking at how to beat the Bots how how how to stay ahead of the curve on the jobs Market currently with AI and um I think we'll be having some more
• 85:30 - 86:00 design events to floran suggested a really good one uh this evening bootstrapping own projects together with little experienceing maybe that's something that we could see going forward laoren have you got anything else to add have I missed anything no no I don't think so I pasted the links into chat so if you want to like uh check out open doors or follow me on LinkedIn uh or talk about something there uh feel free I also for mentoring and and portfolio reviews like dedicated ones uh as a service so if you want to if you
• 86:00 - 86:30 want to take a look at that um feel free to to do that and to hit me up there um yeah that was fun I love reviewing portfolios I could I could I could have gone an hour more hly so but yeah obviously I don't don't want to put you for that too so um yeah maybe we'll just do another session at some point and uh yeah um nice one thank you thanks for hosting me yeah thanks so much and just
• 86:30 - 87:00 to just to add as well um I think some people who may be watching this evening uh thinking about taking the first step and uh Florian's living proof that um Florian changed careers and uh did a a boot camp uh UI design program um and is now working in in a leading role um so it just goes to show that it can be done and I think one of the most important things is like taking the first steps so um Lauren thanks so much for coming on this evening and sharing all your expertise and yeah thanks everybody for
• 87:00 - 87:30 joining and yeah see you next time yeah see you everyone thank you