How to ace the 20% of portfolio that could land you a job interview?

According to the Pareto principle, commonly referred to as the 80/20 rule, roughly 80% of outcomes are produced by 20% of causes. This implies that you don't need to exert too much effort in order to achieve amazing outcomes; you only need to know where to focus your efforts. So, what 20% of your portfolio should you concentrate on in order to achieve greater results?

Tips To Build A Great Case study Structure 💡

1. Your contribution to the project

The recruiters will want to know if you were the one doing the things they appreciated the most if they liked the project; otherwise, what's the point, isn't that one of the most crucial things?

Example:

The screenshot was taken from Jonny Czar’s portfolio

2- Introduction — scenario/problem/goal

What problem are you trying to fix, what goals do you have for the project, and what specifically are you trying to do?

You might view it as an introduction if you think about what this project is all about. How do I start telling this story? You should explain how you arrived to the conclusion that these features needed to be developed in the first place as you might only be working on a small portion of a company's product while working there.

This screenshot was taken from Nicolas Pellegrino’s portfolio

The screenshot was taken from Jonny Czar’s portfolio

3 — Who are the users?

Who are the clients of your clients, and who are the clients of the company you work for? Who will be using the product? Describe the user in a few lines or represent them in a different graphic, it all depends on the type of project you were working on.

4 — Design Process

How did you prioritise what needed to be created and how did you overcome the design challenges along the way? We all encounter difficulties when working on a project; things might not go as planned, your research might not produce the desired outcomes, forcing you to change course, or you might discover that the tools you wanted to build would be too expensive to be profitable, forcing you to find a less expensive solution.

Because so much can happen while developing a product, be sure to make notes whenever you encounter a problem so you can discuss it in the case study.

5. What tools did you use for this project?

The recruiter may find this to be very useful as they are frequently looking for candidates with experience using specific tools, and since tools are frequently mentioned in job descriptions, the best way to demonstrate that you have those skills is to demonstrate your use of those tools in your projects.

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The screenshot was taken from Jonny Czar’s portfolio

6 — Research

There are so many ways of doing research, and so many technics to apply in different scenarios, so, which scenario did you have and which research did you apply to collect the right data? Have you interviewed users? Have you created a research plan?

Which types of research were conducted in this project? Were they very organized? What did you want to know and which conclusions did you get after the analysis? Did you apply your learnings in the project? How?

7— Sketches, wireframes, graphics, prototype

If you are claiming to be a designer, you better make sure you can design an easy way of showing up the development of your project.

Try to transform complicated information into something very easy to understand by translating it into a Design, and don’t forget to show your design process, visuals are very important.

screenshot taken from Samuel's portfolio

8- Results and takeaways from a Usability test/before and after applying UX Design to the product

Don’t forget to show your usability tests and improvements that were made after finding problems. This can be included in the research peace.

The screenshot was taken from author projects— Sorry, this isn’t English

The screenshot was taken from Nuno's portfolio

9 — The finished product.

Display the screens you created, any animations you created, and whatever else you know how to do really well. Don't forget to receive recognition for your contributions to the project.

10 — Recommendations/Impact

Finish the case study by highlighting the project's strong points, just as you would when concluding a talk, an article, etc. You can also utilise statistics or customer feedback to demonstrate 

11- What did the project teach you?

No matter how many projects you take on as a UX designer, there will always be something new to learn from each one. Make sure to take notes as you work on the project so you won't forget anything.

12. Next actions

What would be the next actions to enhance what you have created so far? A product is never truly finished.

The 20% effort that you should be making 💡

You can have a detailed description of your case study, but if you don't do this, you might invest 80% of your effort into it and only receive 20% in return—or even no response at all. In addition to the topics covered in this essay, nothing will be successful unless you can tell a good story.

You should focus 20% of your energy on "how you put everything together to tell a tale." Since recruiters initially just have one thing in mind, be sure to use a story that counts. Someone capable of having an influence, someone who can work well in a team, and someone who can produce results.

Here is an example:

We had ''this'' problem, so we did our research and arrived at ''this'' possibility of solving the problem, we designed, we tested, we fixed, we tested, we fixed, we launched, we got a result of ''this size'' impact and we found out we can still improve ''that'' and ''that'' in order to achieve a ''certain goal'' in a ''certain time''.

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