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What Makes a Good UX Design Portfolio Project?
Everyone wants a good project to be hired
When creating your portfolio, you might think: what idea is valuable for a school or side project? There is a misconception that certain ideas will result in great projects. In fact, a good design portfolio project has five key elements that make it stand out: context, scope, rationale, visuals and impact.
1.Context is the problem you are trying to solve for: What is the problem and why is it important? Understanding the reasoning behind how the project came into existence and where the idea came from begins to help you frame the scope for achieving it and how you begin to approach the problem. Without context, no one will understand your project because the problem is what is driving the outcome. Here is some reference to framing a problem the “right” way:
2. Scope are the internal and external factors surrounding it: Lots of different elements will influence how big or small the problem is. This is through determining and documenting product goals, deliverables, features, functions, tasks, deadlines, and cost (time, money). Your design decisions will often be influenced by the scope and a solid project calls them out and takes them into consideration regarding the way you approach your process and visuals (i.e. I designed x based off y product goal because it best addresses z problem). Designing something for 100 users is going to be different than designing for more than a 1000 users, which would most likely in different requirements and constraints.
3. Rationale is your design process: Doing research, exploring design decisions, collaborating your peers, encountering obstacles, achieving wins are all part of your journey to crafting a solution that is well thought out, on top of being well framed. The problem and scope dictate your approach and are part of helping you design it. (i.e I designed x based off y product goal because it best addresses z problem…And this how it leads to the next step of my process). Here is some additional…
