Portfolio can be instrumental in your career as a UX designer. Good UX portfolio by itself will not get you hired, but it will definitely open many doors and interview opportunities.
There is a lot you can learn from looking at portfolios of experienced UX designers. It is not just about presenting your work and yourself as a designer. You can get insights into design process of experienced designers, as well as get a feel for a wide range of projects UX designers get to work on.
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You might be tempted to compare your work with what you see in the portfolios of established UX designers. Don’t do that. If you do, make sure you are looking up to what they have done, and not looking down at what you’ve done. Remember, they’ve been practicing their craft for years. If you are just starting out in UX design you are not competing with these designers in any way. These designer would apply and get hired for senior or consulting gigs, whereas you might be happy with a position of an intern or a junior designer. Also keep in mind that the work they show in the portfolio is the best of the best they have done.
Great examples of UX designer portfolios
It is really difficult to pick and choose the best UX design portfolios, so the list below comes in no particular order. My main goal is to showcase variety of presentation styles, and present a range of portfolios for your inspiration.
I said it once, but I’d like to say it again, these are portfolios of established and prominent UX designers, so don’t be intimidated by the quality of work and presentation. This is a level that many designers aspire to achieve. Use these examples as a source of inspiration and as something you can look up to and learn from.
Liz Wells
Liz Wells is a user experience designer based in Brooklyn, New York. She worked with Google, Spotify, Twitter, Nike, Facebook and many others. A notable feature of her portfolio is a text only home page that resembles a resume. It is very clean and well laid out. It prominently lists some of the projects she’s worked on. One thing that I don’t particularly like is images that popup on hovers over the project names. They seem to be not necessary and detract from simple and powerful text-only design.
In contrast to the home page the case studies are full of large images and videos with some (but not much text). They present context for the projects and tell engaging stories.
Tobias van Schneider
Tobias served as art director & lead product designer at Spotify. Now co-founder of Semplice — a portfolio building platform for designers.
His home page is almost a complete opposite of Liz’s: loads of images, and large (sometimes too large for my taste), bold typeface.
Note that Tobias uses the main page to showcase his work, and the menu links to other elements including his personal projects. He doesn’t include much of the process and behind-the-scenes and chooses to focus on the strong visuals of the end product.
Bethany Heck
Bethany Heck is a multi-disciplinary designer who worked as Head of Design at Medium, Executive Design Director at Vox Media. She also worked at Microsoft and IBM.
Her home page looks somewhat quirky. It lists projects she’s been working on and links into neatly presented case studies for a number of high profile projects.
Simon Pan
Simon’s portfolio is referenced on nearly every single “UX Portfolios” list out there and for a good reason. His case studies include projects for Uber and Amazon, which are very well written and presented.
Michael Evensen
Michael used to work as the Lead Product Designer for SoundCloud’s Mobile team. What is notable about his portfolio is that it really consists of a single case study (presented right on the home page) and rather concise about me page. The case study itself is an in-depth look at SoundCloud’s iOS app redesign.
Ed Chao
Ed is a Human Interface Designer at Apple. His portfolio showcases work he has done for Dropbox as well as some personal projects. Ed’s portfolio has a very minimal design. In fact Ed doesn’t even include About Me page.
Note that his case studies for Dropbox are focused on Interface design. It should give you a good idea for how involving Interface design can be.
Karolis Kosas
Karolis Kosas is a product designer at Stripe. His portfolio includes a number of very well presented case studies for a number of project (including as self-initiated ones).
Ales Nesetril
Ales Nesetril is a product designer from Prague, Czech Republic. One notable feature of Ales’s portfolio is a large collection of self-initiated projects.
Other UX designer portfolio examples
Below is a list of other UX design portfolios. They are by no means inferior to the ones listed above. I could write a paragraph about each one, but there would be way too many words for me to write and for you to read. Let portfolios speak for themselves!
This list of UX designer portfolios is updated regularly to showcase a range of UX design portfolio examples for your inspiration!
Please send me links to other UX designer portfolios and I will add them to the list!
More on UX design portfolios
As I was looking for examples of UX design portfolios I came across several articles that I found very good. Hope you find them helpful too:
- UX Design Portfolio: Best Practices by They Make Design
- 10 Inspiring UX Portfolios and Why They Work by Tobias van Schneider
- Top 19 UX Designer Portfolio Websites in 2019 by Case Study Club
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