With your portfolios designed with storytelling in mind, how does that translate to your portfolio review? After all, the online portfolio draws attention to your candidacy, and people won’t see your presentation until you’re brought onsite. It isn’t until you’re brought onsite that you have the chance to actually tell your story.

The reason storytelling is a key component of your portfolio review is that it’s also a key component of your work as a designer. Being a good storyteller can help build empathy, and having to present your work provides hiring committees strong signals on whether you can use storytelling as part of your design toolkit. So it’ll be important to not only have your work designed and presented at a high quality, but also be able to speak to the work in an engaging, concise way.

Presenting through storytelling

According to the Dictionary, a story is, “a narrative… designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader.” As a designer, what this means is your presentation needs to convince your audience in an interesting way on why you’re a good fit for their team.

In the previous lesson, we talked about starting your portfolio presentation with an introduction. This sets the stage for your story with a good first impression and setting expectations. Once you’ve primed your audience with who you are and what you’ll be talking about, you’ll talk through each of your case studies as their own stories.

Telling an effective story means you consider your audience. You are presenting to make sure that they can understand what you’re saying in a concise and memorable way.

Structuring your story

Beginning

With each case study, you have the chance to paint a picture for your audience. Was there anything interesting about the problem your team was trying to solve? Were the goals you were aiming to solve defined in a unique way?

Your goal is to give just enough information that the hiring committee can follow along and understand the environment the project took place in. Be concise, and get into the work as soon as possible.

Middle

As you walk through project highlights and your designs, consider how you’ll add color to the design progression and iteration. For example, just like any good story there may have been some conflict that really affected the project outcome. From there, once you get to the final design, walk through it as if you were presenting your design to stakeholders. What makes the design successful and effective for solving the problem?

Your goal is to share your experience through pivotal moments in a way that emphasizes your design skills and how you successfully solved for a user need.

End

Not every story has a happy ending, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any success. In addition to positive outcomes like improved key metrics, were there any other outcomes or takeaways that provided other benefits (like for the team)? The case study can still be framed as a happy ending depending on how you conclude the story.

Preparing your portfolio review by focusing on storytelling should make practicing easier, as you shift your goal from running down a list of accomplishments to highlighting your experiences. Storytelling will also personalize and differentiate yourself from the sea of design case studies interview committees go through.

Common Questions

During your portfolio reviews, the following questions might arise. You should either try to answer them in your portfolio or be ready to field them after:

Product Thinking

• What is the human problem you’re solving?
• How do you know it’s a real human problem (i.e. what research insights or data backs it up)?
• Why does the business care about this? What business metrics or outcomes might the solution affect?
• What was the actual outcome of this work?
• Was it successful? Did you meet or exceed the business metrics? If not, why?
• Knowing what you know now, what might you go back and do differently?

Visual Design

• Did you work within existing pattern libraries or OS guidelines? Or did you develop something new? Either way, why?
• How did the use of color, typography and other design choices help you solve the problem you identified?

Interaction Design

• Do you have rationale for each design decision, big and small?
• What was the hardest interaction design problem you came across?
• How many iterations did you go through? How did you choose the end solution?
• What is one example of how this started out more complex and you simplified it over time?
• How did you use design to guide the user to an intended outcome

Tips & common mistakes

• Be truthful. With the focus on storytelling, there may be a temptation to over-embellish points or “wax poetic.” Storytelling is meant to be a medium for presenting your work, not distract from the work itself.
• Take your time. When you’re presenting, nerves may make you feel like you want to speed through your presentation. At this point of the interview process, the hiring committee is gauging your presentation and communication skills.
• Set the pace. During the introduction, you should call out your presentation style. For example, will you save questions at the end of the presentation or in-between projects? Did you want to allow people to interrupt your presentation to ask questions? Having this conversation upfront will make for a smoother presentation.
• Finish early. The hiring committee would much rather end an interview early than have to rush towards the end. Ending your presentation early gives the committee more time to think about questions and discuss your presentation at the end. It’ll generally be good to leave about 15 minutes for questions, so for example if your portfolio review is for 1 hour, you should aim to talk through your case studies in 45 minutes.
• Present with confidence. Easier said than done, but if you focus on your story with good eye contact, enunciation, and speaking rhythm than than you will at least look confident