7 practical portfolio presentation tips for product designers

Johny Vino

Published in

UX Collective

3 min readApr 5, 2019

As a Product Designer, we spend 50% of our time making presentations, I am going to share a few tips I learned.

№1. Don’t look silly

We think sharing our personality makes it look genuine, but sometimes it reduces your level. Once your reputation got damaged at the starting of the presentation, it is pretty hard to regain people attention.

No dumb jokes
Avoid using these words: So you know… basically… obviously… at the end of the day. I dont know…. Maybe…. Yeah Yeah… Kind off…
Sometimes people say → I worked as a cook 👩‍🍳. Make sure why it is necessary to tell in this context.

№2 Show Evidence

Brain Doubts a Foreign Accent — Scientific american

If you are a non-native English speaker it may be hard for you to communicate your idea clearly, this may cause people to doubt the accuracy. Here are some hints

✅ Don’t just say I tested the concept show the Evidence of testing.
✅ Show more Doodles, field work, non-polished screen even it looks terrible it’s okay. Those factors naturally make you an honest person.
🛑 Dont make random assumptions like “Kids love the color” — How do you know?
✅ Show statistics, from our field research “75% of kids are more inclined towards colored version”
🛑 Never say: They like this design, They said it’s easy to use.
✅ Describe Who are they? Ex: Linda 35 years old working women from New York said: “she would use this feature”.
✅ Show real Persona’s picture: Describe very specific characters, Pain-point
🛑 Don’t say I decided to make this screen list view.
✅ Say: We found from the survey/interview that, the list view is very easy for users to read.

№3. Present →Don’t read

What is the Story your arehere to tell is important

Please. Please. Don’t read the text in your slides.
Use more Visuals try to avoid text in the slide.
✅ Change your emotion and voice level
🛑 Don’t just speak continuously without looking at the listeners.
✅ Try describing differently than the words used in the slides.
Tell your unique coherent story. Every single designer in the world is going to follow this format (Problem. Goal. Research. Solution. Metrics). Think different but be unified.
Knowing who is in the room of your portfolio presentation is super important because it will help you to tailor your presentation relevant to them.

№4. No fancy animated slides

“Though humans are sending satellites to Mars, we still can’t fix the video conferencing😞 ”

Most common issues,

There will be Network/Bandwidth Issues — Most of the time your animated gif won’t work.
Audio Issues — Sounds clips never works. If you are lucky it may work, but in companies, people can’t listen loudly.
Display color issue — Make sure your slides are legible to read from far and in poor displays — black and white slides are best.

№5. Show only Realistic/ Viable product

Think about the long-term survival of the product and its ability to money over a time

What would go wrong — State possible failure and breakage may happen.
Recommend some ideas to meditate.
Demonstrate the value — Ex: This app makes the booking process fast, cheap.
How you are going to measure it?

№6. Hints for Q/A section

Listen carefully.
Give a short and thoughtful response.
Answer in bulleted points.

For example, if the interviewer asks “why do you decide to have a Blue color”?

Wrong way:

Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…

Correct way
1. User said Blah…Blah…Blah…Blah…
2. From interview Blah…Blah…Blah…
3. Blah…Blah…

№7. Health

10 min before the video call

Drink one glass water.
Watch the fun video right before the interview — Because having a positive face will make a big impact on your interview. 😇

Hope it helps! 🙌

Available for new design projects

Email: contact@johnyvino.com | Portfolio: johnyvino.com/interactions