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Noticed a big flaw in most UX portfolios at a local meetup last week
I went to a design meetup in Portland last Thursday and looked through maybe 15 portfolios people brought on their laptops. Almost everyone had case studies that showed the final screens but skipped over the messy middle part where actual decisions got made. One guy's project for a pet adoption app went straight from research notes to polished high-res mockups with no wireframes or usability test results. Am I wrong for thinking the ugly early sketches tell more about your process than the pretty final shots?
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michaeladams1mo agoMost Upvoted
Exactly this. Ran into a similar thing at a coffee shop meetup in Austin where a guy's redesign had zero messy sticky notes or failed layouts and I just couldn't trust the final result.
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reese55118d ago
Wait, did that dude actually show a portfolio with no evidence of iterative work? That would give me pause too. I used to think the final polished product was all that mattered. Then I saw a portfolio from a guy who claimed he designed an entire app in two days. The screenshots were perfect, no notes, no rough drafts, nothing. I realized there's no way to know if he actually solved real problems or just made pretty pictures. Now I look for the messy stuff, the scribbled notes, the wireframes that went nowhere. It tells me someone actually thought through the decisions.
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