90% of designers are unhirable?
90% of designers are unhirable?
Mar 6, 2024
#Design Language
#Design Systems
When I say 90% of designers are unhirable, what I mean is they’ll be turned down immediately by design-mature companies.
Here’s the harsh truth: I’ve reviewed more than 1,000 portfolios in my design career so far, and I turned 90% of them down because of one thing — the linear design process.
By “linear design process” I mean cookie-cutter case studies that always read the same. The designer learned about a problem, conducted user interviews, created user personas, proceeded to sketches, then mockups and wireframes, made everything beautiful through visual design, created a prototype, and tested it with five users. Everything was perfect so they also created a design system which is not a design system but a style guide. But they call it a “design system” because it’s trendy and a keyword for the recruiters.
It’s like finding a product that you want to buy online and it only has 5-star reviews. When everything is shown as perfect it loses credibility — are the reviews fake? It’s the same when I review your cookie-cutter portfolio — when everything’s perfect I wonder whether it’s all fake.
The 90% is my estimation based on the many portfolios I reviewed, I don’t know what the exact number is, but it’s high. Most UX and product design portfolios have two case studies that are the same, it’s just the details that differ slightly.
I posted a much shorter version of this post on LinkedIn a couple of months ago and it went viral. Many experienced designers agreed:
Many case studies read to me like school homework: they knew what the answer and the process were “supposed to be” according to the textbook, so made up the story to fit. In reality, as you point out, it’s never smooth and linear. It’s messy and loopish. If you’re doing a good job, you rarely end up with anything remotely like you anticipated when you started out. (Source)
Here’s the harsh truth: I’ve reviewed more than 1,000 portfolios in my design career so far, and I turned 90% of them down because of one thing — the linear design process.
By “linear design process” I mean cookie-cutter case studies that always read the same. The designer learned about a problem, conducted user interviews, created user personas, proceeded to sketches, then mockups and wireframes, made everything beautiful through visual design, created a prototype, and tested it with five users. Everything was perfect so they also created a design system which is not a design system but a style guide. But they call it a “design system” because it’s trendy and a keyword for the recruiters.
It’s like finding a product that you want to buy online and it only has 5-star reviews. When everything is shown as perfect it loses credibility — are the reviews fake? It’s the same when I review your cookie-cutter portfolio — when everything’s perfect I wonder whether it’s all fake.
The 90% is my estimation based on the many portfolios I reviewed, I don’t know what the exact number is, but it’s high. Most UX and product design portfolios have two case studies that are the same, it’s just the details that differ slightly.
I posted a much shorter version of this post on LinkedIn a couple of months ago and it went viral. Many experienced designers agreed:
Many case studies read to me like school homework: they knew what the answer and the process were “supposed to be” according to the textbook, so made up the story to fit. In reality, as you point out, it’s never smooth and linear. It’s messy and loopish. If you’re doing a good job, you rarely end up with anything remotely like you anticipated when you started out. (Source)
Here’s the harsh truth: I’ve reviewed more than 1,000 portfolios in my design career so far, and I turned 90% of them down because of one thing — the linear design process.
By “linear design process” I mean cookie-cutter case studies that always read the same. The designer learned about a problem, conducted user interviews, created user personas, proceeded to sketches, then mockups and wireframes, made everything beautiful through visual design, created a prototype, and tested it with five users. Everything was perfect so they also created a design system which is not a design system but a style guide. But they call it a “design system” because it’s trendy and a keyword for the recruiters.
It’s like finding a product that you want to buy online and it only has 5-star reviews. When everything is shown as perfect it loses credibility — are the reviews fake? It’s the same when I review your cookie-cutter portfolio — when everything’s perfect I wonder whether it’s all fake.
The 90% is my estimation based on the many portfolios I reviewed, I don’t know what the exact number is, but it’s high. Most UX and product design portfolios have two case studies that are the same, it’s just the details that differ slightly.
I posted a much shorter version of this post on LinkedIn a couple of months ago and it went viral. Many experienced designers agreed:
Many case studies read to me like school homework: they knew what the answer and the process were “supposed to be” according to the textbook, so made up the story to fit. In reality, as you point out, it’s never smooth and linear. It’s messy and loopish. If you’re doing a good job, you rarely end up with anything remotely like you anticipated when you started out. (Source)