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Today I want to talk about one way you can make your portfolio presentations stand out:

Hooking your audience at the very beginning of each case study.

Put yourself in the shoes of the hiring team that you’re presenting to.

They see a ton of presentations.

Other portfolio presentations
Design presentations at work
Business presentations at work

Many of these are dry and boring.

Don’t let yours be one of them.

Too much backstory, too many words, or focusing too much on process are common mistakes

A designer may give a lot of context about the business the case study was for, the market, or the users.

Or they may show process diagrams: The Double Diamond or Design Thinking.

       How many times do you think a hiring manager has seen standard process diagrams?

This all means one thing: A lot of time goes by before the audience sees something compelling.

Which begs the question: What IS compelling?

Ideas for making your case study more compelling

Outcomes, outputs, and challenges are all great ways to kick off your case study and get the audience’s attention right from the start.

Dive, a series of interviews with accomplished designers, has a great episode about portfolio presentations with Steph Engle—designer at Snap and formerly at Airbnb, Cruise, and Facebook.

Steph got a job offer from 100% of the loops they interviewed in.

Steph knows a thing or two about delivering great portfolio presentations that land job offers.

“People do a lot of telling and not showing.  A mistake that people make often is I'll see a deck where it's slides of about me, here's a Double Diamond diagram…when I can only see text and I'm waiting and waiting until I see the designs that makes me anxious.  Some people talk about process and talk about how good they are at certain things and don't actually show what it is.”

—Steph Engle

Designer, Snap Inc.

Quote was edited for brevity from the video transcript.

See 23:59 of Steph’s Dive interview

The most compelling presentations I’ve seen don’t start with a bunch of background information, process, or text heavy slides.

They start with a hi-fi visual or prototype of the final output.
Or a video of a customer raving about the final product.
Or the outcomes: Impressive business results. 

All these things answer questions the hiring team has, make a good first impression, and make me wonder….Wow! How’d they do that?

How I start my case studies

I haven't just seen these in action when interviewing designers.

I’ve tried them myself and found success.

My portfolio presentation resulted in job offers 100% of the time I showed it in interviews.

Case study 1: A before and after from a redesign

The second slide of the case study is a before and after that communicates a lot of info about the project, my contribution, my skillset, and relevant experience for the role.

There’s no text, process, or in depth background info. 

It starts with a single slide that has the project title and my role.

I verbally give quick background—this was a real estate startup where I lead a redesign.

And then dive right in.

The next slide is a visual that captures the stark difference between the design before and after the project was complete.

Next I walk through exactly how I accomplished this overhaul of a company’s product.

Case study 2: The central challenge of a 0 to 1 consumer electronics project

Illustration used with permission by Colin Newell. The second slide of this case study dives right into the action: The level of ambiguity in this complicated project.

After another simple title slide, the second case study begins with this illustration that captures the concept of ambiguity—the central challenge of this project.

I lean into this common problem (I know it will be relatable) and then show the audience exactly how this challenge was overcome.

Last thought: Make it relevant for the role you’re interviewing for

As Steph points out in the video above, don’t make the audience wait to see what a great prototyper you are if you know the role is heavy in prototyping. 

Make sure your story does two things:

1. Gives the hiring team what they’re looking for as quickly as possible
   
   
2. Delivers the message you want to convey about yourself

For example: One of the roles I interviewed for with this presentation was the redesign of an outdated product—exactly what I show in the first case study. 

In less than a minute (!) the hiring team saw proof that I’d done it before.  

And I positioned myself as someone who enjoyed that type of work and would be successful in the role.

Portfolio presentations can be hard, but you can go in confidently when you know you’ve got a compelling story that will resonate with the audience.

That's it! I hope this helps you improve your portfolio presentations. 

Helpful Links

Joseph Louis Tan provides nice examples of showing the impact of your design work even if your project hasn’t been built or released yet. 

Isaac Dailey has an excellent writeup on why certificate grads struggle to find work. I think this is applicable to more than just design certificates. Isaac’s article: Finished the Google UX Professional Certificate? Congrats! Here’s Why You Aren’t Getting Hired.