An actionable guide to building a UX portfolio that gets you hired
Building a portfolio is overwhelming. If you’re a designer who’s still “working on it,” Portfolio Playbook is here to help you finish it. Start hands-on with a working portfolio prototype to see proven layouts and understand how to structure and write each section. Then build your own, step by step, with best practices and balanced viewpoints from trusted sources.
A short, silent loop of the interactive portfolio: a working wireframe prototype. An info icon opens to explain the reasoning behind a section, then the demo clicks through from the home page to the work grid, a case study and the about page.
Start with the playbook
Writing the case study
Turn a project into a story that holds attention start to finish.
Learn the story structure →About Portfolio Playbook
I was laid off without shareable examples of my most recent work. I found myself scrambling to put together case studies that showed off my skills and processes. And even though portfolio guidance was widely available, it was scattered across blog posts, videos, and downloadable PDFs.
To help you build your own UX portfolio and avoid the scramble, I pulled the best nuggets of advice and organized them into one guide.
Across the sources, a solid framework holds up. This site walks you through its strategy and structure, and flags the places where experts disagree, so you can choose what fits your work.
Your portfolio is never finished. Update it as you gain experience and take on new projects. It doesn’t have to be perfect to be ready to share, and you can start with just one project.
Keep a shareable portfolio ready, whether or not you’re job hunting. Then a layoff, a recruiter’s message, or an internal opening will find you with work to share.
About me
I’m Aviva, a product designer and UX writer with a background in educational content design. At Elementor, I taught website best practices through tutorials and courses, and led a content team. Later, as a product designer, I designed onboarding for Elementor products with over 100,000 active installs, and widgets built on a shared design system.
I love turning complex ideas into something people can use right away. I designed and built this site end to end, from the information architecture to the design system, with help from AI tools. That includes an interactive demo portfolio.