Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I wouldn't be scared of adding something that's not pixel perfect, super polished, because if everything is very polished in your portfolio, it's going to feel unnatural. It's going to feel artificial. You don't want to make it perfect because the messy parts and the back and forth, the uncertainties, the mistakes, those are the things that show an authentic approach to building products and doing design.
Hello UX designer and welcome to a new episode of Honest UX Talks. As always, I'm joined by Anfisa and today we will be unpacking what goes into a strong UX case study that you can put in your portfolio and eventually land a job with it.
Hopefully. Yeah, while there's no perfect case study, there are some rules and general principles as well as things that work and things that tend to not work. And we will be unpacking those. And hopefully at the end of this episode, you'll have more clarity as to how to craft a case study that will get your foot in the door. But before we move into today's topic, I want to take a moment to thank
Dovetail. So not only we have a sponsor, but it's actually a product we both love. For those of you who don't know, Dovetail is essentially a research platform that can be your single source of truth for any type of user insight that you have within your team or company. So essentially, it brings together everything you've uncovered from user interviews, product feedback, competitive analysis, surveys, so...
Whatever research source you have can be consolidated for clarity and socializing it with everyone and bringing everyone at the same table and level of understanding with the help of Dovetail, which is great because in my own experience, and I think many of you have probably struggled with that, the biggest problem in research is not eliciting content like insights. It's
circulating them, hosting them, making sure that people have access and that everything is organized and clean and seen in one place. So Dovetail solves that problem. And not only does that, but it's great that thanks to the tagging functionality, you can also bring together and compare pain points with user needs. So you're operating in one place with different research elements. And that really helps you
spot patterns, find connections, and overall build a stronger understanding of the problem space you're trying to solve for. Another thing that will definitely speed up your understanding, what we're trying to achieve typically in a design process of any kind, and especially in the discovery phase when we're unpacking the problem space, is that we're trying to reach a comfortable level of confidence as early as possible. And
And Dovetail will facilitate having everything in one place and making sure that you are putting all the pieces together and uncovering the puzzle of the problem space. But it also helps you start from a very solid foundation because it features, I think, over 100 templates, which is amazing because you don't have to think everything from scratch. You have a foundation that you can immediately start building on top of.
So you'll find templates even in their onboarding. So when I started my first project on their platform, they help you set it up from the very beginning on the foundation of one of their templates. So that's great because it really saves you a lot of time where you would have to start
from zero and put everything together, especially the thinking part, which is the hardest. Spend a lot of time thinking about what needs to go into that foundation. So that's also solved for. So some of my favorite templates from their platform are, there's one that helps you organize your tags from the start. It's called Customer Interview Tags. There's another one dedicated to user interviews that enables you to capture the raw customer data into actionable and organized findings.
And that will also save a lot of time. And I know that when you do user interviews, there's just so much content that's impossible to navigate and filter out. And so this template is super, super helpful. They have templates for competitive analysis, creating personas with the helps of tags, jobs to be done, and so on.
One of the best parts is that you don't need to be a researcher. So this really helps all UX designers because it gives the foundation and the clarity that otherwise you would have to spend a lot of time building. So templates, tags, a lot of cool things that Dovetail is doing. And also one of them is supporting our conversation. Go ahead and give it a try. You will find a link in our show notes.
So now, getting back to our conversation, let's jump into the topic of today with a very short intro on how was your past week, right? Yeah. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the next episode. Always happy to have you back. My last week was actually great because we have just finished the course, the masterclass I was running for three weeks. Today is Sunday.
And on Friday, we had the last lecture. And then on the next day, so I go to sleep after the class and I wake up. We have a birthday of my husband. So we have to travel. We went to another city in Czech Republic. And the whole day was full of adventures. So it was really, really nice. I didn't have a moment to catch the breath and think how my past week. But it was all very dynamic and very cool. I think ultimately, looking back into how the masterclass went, I would say it went for me personally really great.
I definitely felt that the content was very valuable. And then at the end, I was able to kind of structure it in terms of what we did, why we did it, every single piece, how it comes together. So everybody also could have like a clear outlook on the process and what we went through and how it contributes to the strategy of building like application process. And I really, really hope that it will help the students to succeed in their upcoming job hunt.
We're still missing the feedback part. I'm planning to shoot the feedback for every single student next week. But ultimately, the content part is over. And I'm looking forward to start collecting the feedback. I personally do have a gut feeling about what I could have done better. But in terms of content, I know it was definitely helpful. It was taken very well. That's my kind of gut feeling in terms of the content. But yeah, next week is going to be interesting because I'm going to look into everybody's like homeworks and what they prepared and the case studies.
The topic of today, by the way. And yeah, a lot to process, I guess. But I'm excited about it. But now I'm actually finally entering the maternity leave time period. I have about three weeks before my due date. So it's going to be the final time to get some rest and start preparing for the baby to come. Because I have not dealt with that overwhelm just yet. I didn't buy anything yet. Didn't prepare anything. So a lot, a lot to go through. And I have three weeks to do just that. Yeah.
How about you? How was your last week? Thankfully, it wasn't remarkable in any way. It was just a very good week. Nothing in particular. As all of you know, I am in a period where I'm trying not to do a lot of projects at the same time. So I'm focusing on two things, my job with the iPad and the AI product I'm working on. And I'm also working on an AI talk that I'm going to give. Actually, there's going to be multiple talks on AI. And essentially, this is what I'm spending most of my time with.
But also I've had a lot of interesting talks with investors lately. I'm seeing an interest in design products and somehow new products for designers tend to emerge, which is amazing because the climate, as we all know, is pretty strange. But some people still have the courage and determination to try to build tools and get funding. And that's amazing.
Yeah. So that's my week in a very, very short nutshell. Let's jump into the topic of today, UX case studies. I think things changed over the years. So just a very, let's say, short framing for this conversation. I think what worked for case studies a couple of years ago won't work this year.
And moving forward, I think that people have really moved past the recipe and we've all heard and I've been talking myself a lot about the UX portfolio checklist that you don't want to just have a checklist of things in your portfolio, stuff like that. But to start this conversation, so the first step with anything that you do in life, but building a case study is no exception.
It's a laid-up groundwork, right? Laid-up foundation. I see a lot of people that are just paralyzed to start working on their portfolio and their case studies because they simply don't know how to start. So I would start with this question. Yeah, I definitely think, like you said in the intro, I think there is no recipe for sure and there is no process that you can...
follow those bidding paths, steps, et cetera, et cetera, and you will get there. I mean, in a way, you can outline the steps. And in a way, you can say, what are the stages of building the case studies? High level. But every single case study is still unique, and it's a personal story that you'll have to write. So unfortunately, there is no, like, a checklist,
like Iona said, where you would have to mention this, mention this, mention this, mention this, and now you suddenly have a beautiful story. It's not like this, right? So we always have to personalize case studies. And by the way, I want to also start by another quick disclaimer or sort of thing to keep in mind that I think many people would confuse in terms of the case studies. You have to remember for which platform you are creating or for which medium are you creating the case study at this point.
One thing that I see a lot of people are confused about is that they're thinking that once you create the case study, it's universal and it's going to be used across all the stages of the hiring process. Specifically, confusing the web case study that you send to get your feet at the door and the case study you present during the case study presentation stage. Those are different things.
At least from the masterclass I just did, I definitely sensed that that seemed to be the same thing, which is not the case. When you're sending the case study to hiring manager or to the HR, you are still trying to convince them that you're somebody worth talking to. So you are trying to impress them.
You're trying to design an experience for self-reading, right? You need to design a case which will be self-explanatory and keep engaging your audience, which is hiring manager or HR, and also tell the story visually. So you really need to think about that use case, right? You are not there to present it. You are not there to speak about some points. You're not there to answer the questions. You are there. You basically are not there. You're sending the link and it has to be...
self-explanatory and so well written that they keep reading it until the end and they feel like you're the right person to talk to. Which is a difference, again, like I said, there is this other stage in the interviewing process where you go through the presentation.
And that's a different story where instead of everything that is written for you and adjustable for the scanning experience, in the presentation stage, it's completely different because now you have a voice, you can tell the story, you can tell the details, you would have much more time to do that. And when it comes to web case reading, we all know nobody wants to read. So it's a scanning experience. You scan diagonally, you scan for quick pictures, for titles, for quick data pieces and quick insights so that
By scanning it in one, two minutes, you make an impression. Whereas in the case study presentation stage, which goes later, usually it's a third or fourth sometimes stage of the hiring process, you walk them through and you tell the story and you have a space to answer the question and you have for that...
45 to 60 minutes. So always keep in mind for which medium or for which process you are particularly building that case study. And that shouldn't be the same case study. Unfortunately, you cannot present the same web page hoping that they will just ask you the questions and you will answer it on the spot. No, it has to be a story that you're telling and it has to be designed that way as well. So understanding
the medium in which you're sharing that case study is the first thing to start from. Now, when it comes to designing the case study, and like I already said, there is no specific template that you can use. I would not recommend it, at least. But there are stages in which I personally approach building the case studies.
The stages I usually go for, it's actually only three. First is outlining the story. So literally starting by writing down the story that I want to tell and really thinking about what is this key message that I want to convey that the hiring manager or HR needs to understand by scanning through my case study. So I really want to start super plain, black and white text,
text notes or something and just write it all without thinking visual, without thinking which steps I took, without thinking which pictures, which analytical pieces I have to put into it. And really, again, what is the key message? Start from there and then start filling out the story using the story arc, usually. And the story arc, if you haven't heard about, it's this
approach to building any media content, like movies, advertisements, even books. There is always a story arc with like set up, raise in action, climax, drop, and then at the end, the result. So you really try to write the story very well, very well crafted. And that's my first step. Then my second step is usually starting to design for an attention.
And this is where my first initial point about remembering the medium in which you're designing it for is actually very critical. So designing low-fidelity sort of canva for attention means that now, as you have the story and you know your bullet points and structure, what you want to say, you can then visually start organizing that information into some sort of layouts. And for that reason, it's very important that you start low-fidelity, meaning that you don't start immediately thinking about the pixels,
the copy pieces, the visuals and stuff like that. Really, you just want to start designing for attention. Keeping in mind that your typical target user, the hiring manager, design manager, is a busy person and they're overwhelmed. They usually, I don't know, wake up in the morning before work. They have to go through 10, 15, sometimes 30 case studies.
they have one, two minutes to go through yours. And then you have to keep in mind that really it's a default. They're busy and they sip the coffee and they just scan it. They don't read in details. You don't have to create the report. That's the key problem with a lot of case studies online. So what you have to keep in mind is that once you're designing for attention, you really need to start strong, right? You have to have this hook in them
beginning with some sort of really nice and representative image with some really good statistics, numbers, impact, etc, etc. And then start building the story one by one. And again, because you started playing in the text, it should be much easier now because you're now focusing on how do you
organize this information visually. Do you use this layout or this layout? Do you say about the task? Do you show a carousel with, like, screenshots of, I don't know, interviews you did? Or do you start by showing the mirror board with your assumptions, etc., etc.? But you really try to think visually what types of content goes into it. And I really recommend to go for, like,
couple of versions for every single section so that you can compare and think how exactly my content will be shown, how exactly this stage or this story piece is shown on the screen. Also think about what is below, like, you know, there is this concept of above the fold, under the fold. So above the fold, you really need to mention all the key points, like, here's the context of the project, here is the beautiful image of it, here's my impact. And then
Then as they start scanning down, you're telling the story from the beginning, the context, the details, to a little bit of insights, to the process you had, typical things you usually put into the case studies, like your exploration sketches, etc., etc., and then the result. Keeping in mind, the view frame is also very important. Keep in mind that you're designing for a scanning experience.
And my third step that I would do after I have designed the layout for a scanning experience that again makes sense and explains the story visually correctly in a self-explanatory way, so to say. The third step usually for me is to start focusing on the content. One of the typical mistakes is that people start from the content. Like, what content do I have? Let me check my case. Let me check my visuals. Let me check what I did there. Let me check my notes. You start very tactical from the small details. And then from small details, you're trying to build a big picture
which, on my opinion, personally, is not a very good and easy way to build your case study, because you will be overwhelmed with details. You will not know what to prioritize. When you start from the story, you actually put the content within that story, so it's easier for you to make decisions and don't get overwhelmed with all the details of the case studies and what you should include and should not. So only the third step after you have designed the story, then you mapped it on the case study sort of via frame, then you continue to the content.
And that's when images you select has to be very proper. The titles have to be very strong. This is basically the stage when you can start being creative and identify global styles for your case study. The copy is very important, like I said. Images are very important. Styles, tweaking the content, testing the content and stuff like that. The reason why I think this stage is also super important is because if you keep in mind the hiring manager,
who's a very busy person sipping the coffee in the morning and checking 15 case studies before they start their day. And we remember that they will be scanning it diagonally. You can imagine that they will not read the small text, the description text. They will be reading it only for the titles and images.
So now, as you are designing the visuals and the copy, all the communication styles, now you have to optimize your case study for quick reading and quick scanning of the visuals. And this is the tip here that I personally use a lot, and I really love to use it. Imagine you only have titles. Will it tell the story or not? This is like a quick test you can run on your case study. And if your titles will not tell the story, then maybe it's not a great scanning experience. Because if it's just going to be the report,
For example, I did this project, I did personas, I did research, I did customer journeys, I did brief, I did wireframes, et cetera, et cetera. It's just going to tell you the process that you followed, but not going to tell the story that you followed, that was created. And that is like a default cookie cutter portfolio that you don't create because every other portfolio...
that this hiring manager will be looking through will be the same. They will all have the same titles. It will look very classic. It will look like this stamped, printed portfolio from some sort of bootcamp, which will not make you stand out.
So optimize your case studies for the titles and for the nice, really cool, really like big, oriented on the details images. And that will already make your case pop. At least in my opinion. At least how I check the case studies, it's always like that. So yeah, that will be my approach to building the case studies. Just to conclude again, start with a story, put it onto the wireframe and design it for attention. And then last but not least, create the content that is scannable. Key is the titles and the images.
What about you? How would you usually create the case studies, at least the ones that you are sending to the hiring manager in the early stages?
So you've unpacked a lot of things there. First of all, I agree with all of your points. I think you captured the gist of what goes into a good preparation and process for crafting your case study. I'm not sure I can add a lot of value to that, but I'm going to speak from my personal experience, how I approach writing my own case studies. So how I start is I start with the end. Like, what do I want the person reading my case study to go home with? If you want, like, what do I want them to feel at the end? What do I want them to know at the end?
What's my North Star? What am I going for with this case study? And then this sort of gives me the clarity that should reflect in a narrative. For example, that this was a project that involved a lot of collaboration and that the main challenges were sort of figuring out
if we're in the right problem space, because it felt like we don't have very good, let's say, product market fit or a good enough understanding of the problem. I'm looking at the main things that need to go into this story to give the feeling that this was a project that
that was very keen on collaboration or where the challenge was navigating a complex ecosystem of people or teams or the challenge was just operating in a very uncertain research space where we didn't have a lot of information we didn't have a lot of time or resources like I start from the main ideas that I want the person to get and then I deconstruct them into points in the story and
That sort of gives me the initial structure that I need. And then also at the end, I literally put, let's say, small slides or post-its or sketches on paper and try to construct a narrative arc. I'm a huge...
advocate for non-checklisting your portfolio. So make it as personal and as authentic and as relevant for the context and the story you're telling. So I don't really appreciate seeing this is a context, this is the problem, this is the wireframe, this is the persona, this is so whatever, just putting things in there so it looks like a process. But I feel that every case study should have context.
What was I doing here? What was my role? What were the other people I was working with? What was the initial setup? What did we know? Like you have to provide some context, right? So sometimes I see portfolios of junior designers that lack exactly this part of the checklist, which is important. So it needs to be in there.
Start with some context and then go into what makes that project special. Most of the times it's the challenges. Most of the times it's the things that didn't go as planned or that weren't necessarily the ideal UX process. Because you can think that whoever is reading your case study, if they're in the design industry already, hopefully by now they understand how the design process works.
So they don't want to see another repetition of, I started by empathizing and then we ideated and then we built this solution and then we tested it. And so they don't want to see those blocks again and again and again, super reused and so on. So they want to see what made this story particularly special, the specific challenges or the specific problems that you had to navigate. How did you navigate them?
Successfully, maybe you failed. That's also fine. Put it in there. So the idea is to tell a story and it sounds very broad, but if you break it into like narrative points, what do I want this person to know at the end? Then you're going to have much more clarity and it's going to feel easier to build.
And I'm also a big fan of visual portfolios. And when I say visual, I totally don't mean a lot of UI screens and just the slanted angles of the very marketing-ish mobile phones with unrealistic UI in them. So no, that's not what I mean by visual.
But I do mean that since people don't have a lot of time and they have to see hundreds sometimes of portfolios, you want to make them, like Anfisa was mentioning earlier, of course, scannable. But to make things scannable, especially for designers and as designers, you want to make them visual.
So think about sketches. Think about diagrams. Think about any visual support that can help the person looking at this portfolio have a quicker understanding, an easier understanding. Help them grasp your problem space with visual support as much as possible. And make it relevant, right? Because if you put like a picture of a wall of post-its, it's going to look pretty, but they've probably seen...
hundreds of walls of post-its and the post-its are impossible to read so they're not relevant to your problem so maybe add like a
picture of six post-its where you can actually see the content or the main themes that are on them. So use visual support as much as possible. And then I would also, this is a point that's sort of debated, like how personal should I make it? How much should I talk about my own learnings from this case study? Do I want to talk about how I'm a better person after doing this process
I think you should talk about outcomes as much as possible. If it's a real project and you're in a real company and you were able to measure the effect, the result of your work, that's incredibly powerful. You want to put it in there. Even if it's bad, put it in there. Outcomes are powerful because it gives the reader the understanding that everything you've done led up to something.
translate it into something that's tangible, that's concrete. So if you have outcomes, put them in there. And it's powerful. Like it's just powerful by itself because it means it's real. And if you don't, let's say a second best option to outcomes is talking about the lessons you've learned or even some things that you might have done differently now or looking back. Don't go overboard. Like it shouldn't be another case study about what you learned from your case study.
But you could add some points or some of the main ideas that help that person understand that you are able to build self-awareness, reflect on what you've done, analyze the process, improve it, and iterate on your own work as a designer. So those are the things that came to my mind.
I would say let's go even more tactical on a very tangible level. What are your top practical tips for building a good portfolio? And if there's anything that comes to your mind, that's like, don't. Like, that's totally something to avoid. And I have a couple of those. But maybe you can start and unpack the very practical, tangible tips. Yeah, of course. I think it's, yeah, it's a good point. We can talk about the great things to do and things that are not recommended to do in the case studies.
I definitely have a lot of suggestions around like tactical tips that I think would make your case study look better or a bit more effective. But again, it's not a recipe. It's not that if you do all those things, it will magically stand out. It's really something for you to try out. If you feel like it could help your story to be told better, then you can try it out. And if not, then maybe don't. So yeah, it's still your call at the end of the day. But the tip number two
One that I personally love to see in the case studies is actually optimized paths for different reading styles. What I mean by that is that I've seen a couple of case studies where the designer would say, okay, here's an intro, basically give you this above the fold experience with all the summaries and like,
beautiful shot and the impact and now you're triggered, you're hooked, you really want to check it out. And then designer gives two paths. One would be long read for those hiring managers who actually want to kind of read the whole story with all the details, with all the problems that went into the process.
Or you can also optimize for like a quick read, right? So like just a summary kind of experience. And then maybe the first case study or the first path would be like five minutes or seven minutes read, whereas the first one would be only like two, three minutes read. And depending on how busy I am as a hiring manager, because I guess my key point that I will also mention in Techways is that remember who you're designing for.
So if I'm a busy hiring manager, I would probably opt in for reading the short version, the summary one. That will give me a clear understanding of who you are as a designer and your kind of thinking process. So I really liked to see those paths, like personalization, I guess. The second tip actually that goes along this one is also maybe personalization.
potentially offering an alternative way of reading or watching your case study. So maybe you want to personalize it even farther and kind of shoot the video. I mean, it's a risky one because you're hacking the system. Everybody expects to read it. But we keep in mind that we want to stand out and we also want to make sure that the engagement is there. So when I open the link, I'm engaged with it. I don't drop out because it's a boring cookie cutter portfolio that I have seen over and over again, right?
So again, it's a risky one, but sharing the video with like a your walkthrough, don't make it too long still. Again, keep in mind busy persona that has to maximum three minutes to walk through it. So offering a video walkthrough up to three minutes could also be an option that some people could find more engaging. And I think videos have better chance to be watched till the end rather than, you know, reading a very long report with like hundreds of lines of text that I'm
I, as a busy hiring manager persona, would just be bored to read and I would not have time and no energy and blah, blah. Yeah, that's like my first tip to think about multiple paths for reading and keeping in mind that your goal is the engagement so they keep
sticking around by reading your portfolio, your case study, and making a first strong impression. A few more tips I personally recently tried. This is something I recommended to students of my Into Next Jobs masterclass. Kind of take advantage of the chat GPT.
and use this alternative ways of writing your case study. And like I said, I think the core of every good case study is the good structure and the good story. I mentioned this, Ioana also mentioned that she's very focused on writing the story from like a key points, what she wants to communicate. And maybe you can take advantage of GPT technology. And what I did in one of my case studies is asking chat GPT to...
capture the information in your case study. So, chat GPT in a conversational way can ask you, what is this case study about? You give them the key points and then they ask you to draft it for you. And so, they might reframe it from what they understood from you. Maybe you can also adjust it to different writing styles. Maybe for corporate setups, you would write more official, more like strict,
and in a serious tone of the voice. Whereas for startups, it will be more chill, more easy, more like kind of casual reading style. So you can actually try playing around with ChatGPT and ask for help as you're trying to create a story, at least with their writing style.
few more tips that i personally love to read in the case studies is mentioning why this project was interesting personally for you as a designer because when we design stuff right when we write our stories we often so focused on like the business and the clients and their needs and their problems but we forget about the let's say personality part of the case study and the personality piece that
actually also makes you stand out and your personal story. And I think what helped me sometimes to understand what kind of person it is, is really to tell why they were interested in this project. Maybe it was the technology that was interesting for you to play around with. Maybe it was a complex challenge that you never worked on before. Maybe it was a new industry you never worked on before. So
Things about how this case study was relevant to you and how it made it interesting for you. I personally also love to see some details of the research, not like every single detail because that will become an report and very overwhelming. But like some details, especially those details that tell the story of your project around how you approach solving problems or how you research solving those problems.
So for example, if you're telling that you did the interviews, don't just tell me that you did interviews with six users. I don't care how many users. I mean, I do care in a way, but it's not a big and important piece of the information for me. What's interesting is how you chose those people. What were the attributes you were looking for? Why exactly these people? What was interesting about that segment for this project? Why you chose this segment and these attributes of the persona or
target user and how you found them. So like small details like this tell me a story about how you think typically. Along those lines, I also like to see details around your ideation stages. For example, show me your whiteboarding, show me your brainstorming session, show me your sketches. I really like to see those because it gives me again an idea about what kind of thinker you are. Where do you start?
Usually, are you a high-level thinker with a lot of high-level concepts? Or are you actually very tactical and you start from screens and stuff like that? So I want to see those nitty-gritty details of your thinking in the portfolio. And that's another tip. So maybe include those and that will help the hiring manager to stay engaged, to look through the details, to look and zoom in into this whiteboarding session picture that you have attached.
so that they can try to have a pick on your thinking process. And that would be it on my side. If you want to add some other great best practices, go ahead. Or if you want to go ahead and start by saying what are the things that you should not do, that's also something interesting that I think many of our listeners want to hear.
I think you touched on a lot of interesting points. I just want to build on top of one of your tactical tips. So I love the idea of having a short version or a longer version and also another similar point, so very tangent to it, is having links or a way to navigate to the artifacts from that design project.
So, for example, let's say you capture some insights from customer journey and you can link it if possible. If you're in a Notion space or you could add it as a modal on your website, whatever, you can give the reader the option to dive deeper into a particular artifact and see how that unfolded.
So I appreciate when there's a easy to follow story, but then there are also these, let's say, gateways or small doors into more tangible parts of what went into that project, specifically different artifacts. And in terms of a lot of do's here, again, I would say very generic one, something I care about is, and you've mentioned it as well, is infusing your personality as much as possible. I like to add a level of
playfulness, to make it less formal and to give the reader the feeling that they're talking to a person, they're reading something written by a person, even if it's with the help of GPT. I haven't yet used it in my portfolio, but I think it can definitely give you a skeleton, right? Or a starting point when you feel like you're in a creative rut or you don't know where to start or you just need that
kick to start editing from, right? Because it's not really usable as it is. You have to put a lot of personality in it and edit it and make it relevant to your particular project. Yeah. So and then when it comes to don'ts, I've always been talking about a checklist portfolio. I'm going to mention it again and again in case you skipped it.
the parts in this episode, make sure you don't have a very cookie cutter, boring kind of journey. Or this is, I did six interviews and then I went into creating a persona and then there's a customer journey and then wireframes and then sketches and then whatever. I think sketches are the fun part. Sometimes they're even missing.
from this checklist portfolio and they're the ones that should be in there. So avoid ticking boxes out of a checklist of things that you feel need to go in your portfolio. So what I personally do to understand if a particular artifact needs to be into my case study or not,
is ask the question does this serve my narrative is it relevant in any way to what i'm trying to convey here to the reader and if the answer is no then i'm gonna leave it out and if the answer is yes then i'm gonna maybe provide them with two ways of navigating that right so if it's let's say a
customer journey, because I used this specific example earlier, then I would kind of add to the portfolio the things that make sense in my narrative. So let's say the main ideas, the main findings, the main pain points that came up and how they map on the experience. And then to anyone who's interested in this
more, I might link the customer journey. And here I think some people might fear that, oh, but my artifacts are really not perfect. They're not portfolio material because they're messy and everything. But that's actually the point. They want to see real work. They want to see the real process like
the messiness of it included. So I wouldn't be scared of adding something that's not pixel perfect, super polished, because if everything is very polished in your portfolio, it's going to feel unnatural. It's going to feel artificial. And this is another don't that I want to make sure I communicate is that you don't want to make it perfect as in very polished and very clean in a way, because you're
The messy parts and the back and forth, the uncertainties, the mistakes, those are the things that show an authentic approach to building products and doing design. So you want to include those as well. And you want to be truthful, right? Don't lie.
I mean, of course, you're framing things in a certain light. You're serving a narrative. You are curating in a way what happened in that process because you can't share absolutely every detail, but make sure you still keep the authentic in it. And then I've mentioned detail. Don't go into a lot of details. I think Anfisa mentioned it as well somehow. So don't go into too much detail. Nobody will read it. It's going to feel overwhelming and it's going to communicate to the audience that you don't know how to craft details.
a pleasant experience. If you're adding mountains of text in your portfolio, then do that. And also make sure navigation is very easy to follow through. So within your case study and then in your portfolio as well, make sure people have a quick way to go from one section to another and then getting back and so on. So these are, let's say, usability conditions, basic usability principles that you need to apply to your portfolio as well.
And I think we can sort of start wrapping up because we've been unpacking a lot of things here. And I want to ask you, Anfi, which are your top three things that stand out from this conversation? Yeah, of course. This time around, for some reason, I actually have very specific and straight to the point takeaways. So I'm not going to mingle around. First and foremost is always remembering who you're designing it for. Keeping in mind your hiring manager persona.
You can even go ahead and like just search them online, search them on LinkedIn and imagine what kind of life it could be. Collect some context about them and assume what kind of person they could be. And it's definitely going to be assumption and maybe could be very not realistic.
but it helps you to design with somebody in mind and remembering that most likely they are busy people, they have a lot of responsibilities on their belt, and they need to manage teams, and they need to work with strategy, and it's just hard for them to be able to succeed at every single piece of their role. So
they will not spend a lot of time reading the detailed report of what you have done. So keep it in mind, the persona is number one. Based on this, my second takeaway is always to try to build a hand-holding portfolio user experience. So because they're busy, because they will only spend a couple of minutes on your portfolio, you want to design this hand-holding experience and everything is very nicely laid out.
when everything is very intentional, right? When the story is not only authentic, like Ioana mentioned, which I really love, by the way, but also very well structured. So you think about the viewports, you thought about what to put above the fold, you thought about maybe different process of reading, the long one and the short one.
potentially even videos. You thought about information you show on your screenshots or on your pictures. Also, like you want to mention, don't show them the wall with sticky notes. I cannot read those. Show them specific sticky notes that you believe contributed to the story, that you believe were the main themes or key insights that you wanted to communicate to then continue telling your story.
So being very intentional with your visuals and with your titles and the scanning paths that these managers could take. The hiring manager will really appreciate the effort you put into crafting that story in a way that they don't have to get distracted, get confused, zoom in too much, like read forever, whatever.
And it's again, at the end of the day, still feels very cookie cutter with like all those default titles of your sections about the steps you took. That's a second takeaway, right? Handholding experience. Yeah, be very conservative and pragmatic about how much information you put there.
That usually conflicts with what we want to do. I totally get it. As a designer, I want to tell as many points as possible. So I definitely want to tell all the nitty gritty details, all the maybe conflicts that went in, all the challenges I have had. But back to the point for number one, keep in mind your target persona and that they don't have so much time to understand everything that went through that project.
So you have to be very careful with how much details you put into it. You even want to test it before you send it out. And that means that you would have to cut the details that do not contribute to the story. I think in the writing, I have heard that they have this principle of shortening the text about
by saying that everything that doesn't contribute to the story is just a noise. So if there is this piece of information or title or picture that you believe will not tell or will not impact the next step you took, think about it as a noise.
It will just confuse the target persona that you're having, right? The hiring manager. So only tell the pieces of information that will then continue and be elaborated upon in the next section. Something that has to be all cohesive, holistic, all connected to each other. And every single piece, continue telling the story. So that's a third takeaway, right?
Make sure you only put their intentional and very deliberately defined information. That is it on my side. How about your takeaways, Ioana? I'm going to add some very brief points. I think one of them is stop feeling paralyzed by the case studies and the portfolio in general and just start working on them.
Now, in 2023, with the help of GPT and so many services out there that leverage GPT, like Copy.ai and Jasper and whatever, there's so much capacity to just get a starting point if you feel like you're really, really stuck.
So I'm all in favor of a human-generated end-to-end case study, even though I'm an AI advocate as well. But I would say if your problem is procrastinating because you don't know how to start, leverage AI for that. Just get started and trust yourself that if you make the first steps, then the next steps will follow naturally. So just get started. And then this leads me to the second point that I want to make,
which is that I feel you should really trust your capacity to tell a compelling story. Always ask yourself, how would a person reading this feel when they read this? Is this a good experience? Is this clear enough? Think of the case study and your portfolio in general as another experience, as another UX project you're working on. And once you frame it like that, you'll continuously ask yourself, is this accessible?
Is this pleasant? Is this clear? Is this usable? And these questions will continuously help you refine whatever it is you're putting into your case study, taking out of your case study and so on. So apply UX principles to building this case study and put the reader at the core of the process, right? So not the user, but the reader, they should be at the center of everything.
and imagine how their experience is going to be. And then the third point, which is also something that I didn't mention, I think, it's a great idea to test yourself.
your case studies with people. So try to reach out to your friends, maybe designers that are more senior than you, maybe mentors. You can leverage free platforms like ADP List. Reach out to people, walk them through your case study. You can pay for the service. I think that's also very fair. Walk people through your case study and get feedback on it as much as possible. So feedback will really, really like with everything we do as designers, like how we see people interacting with our products, right?
helps us refine those products. And it's the same with your case study. Just show them to people, walk them through them, or maybe just don't walk them through them because you're not going to be there when they read it. So just send them the case study and ask for feedback. Of course, with respect to their time. And again, it's absolutely fair to pay for the service.
But feedback is really something that will help you refine it to a point that it's clear enough, it's strong enough, and you can land a job with it. So that's my last point. Thank you, Anfi, for another great conversation. I hope it was great for our listeners as well. For me, it was. And if you want to support our Honest UX Talks, make sure to send us ideas for future episodes because we really want to have relevant conversations.
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