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Portfolio Professional: Experience Designer

What does an experience designer (XD) include in a portfolio?

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webs

Table of Contents

One of the key roles in producing a digital product is the experience designer or XD. An experience designer's job is to design the customer experience within the product. Sometimes the XD is also responsible for UI (user interface) or they might be referred to as UX (user experience). The scope of the job depends on the expectations set by each company.

While the contents of the portfolio might be different, there are some core concepts for any portfolio that apply for XDs as much as any other job. Portfolios should be a show case of your thinking and problem solving. The way those two things are showcased is often with specific pieces or projects you've worked on.

What could be in an XD portfolio?

Customer & Competitor Research

Remember, portfolios are about showcasing how you solve problems and how you think. What strategies do you use to better understand your customer and your competition? How do you capture personas that represent the customers for a product? If you use a tool like Miro, you don't have to try to recreate your work on your website, you can embed an example in your portfolio or export a PDF to add to your portfolio.

Personas Template | User Personas Examples | Miro
Use our free Personas template to capture relevant information about your target audience. Create user personas to better understand customer needs.

Brand Design

If an XD leans more toward graphic design they might also work on creating assets for a brand. In your portfolio you can include how you go from concepts a client shares to creating a color palette, logo mark, word mark, and tagline. Make sure to explain how your process works, not just the final product. You can do this with a video or infographic included in your portfolio.

Graphic design isn't limited to creating images though. It includes but is not limited to: accessibility, typography, sustainability, and information design. To learn more about experiential graphic design check out SEGD (The Society for Experiential Graphic Design).

Customer Journeys

There are many ways to showcase and describe a customer journey. A customer journey map is like a game board that captures what a user's or customer's experience is from when they start to think about a problem the product you're designing for solves. Throughout the mapping process, we capture what the user is thinking and feeling throughout the process. How do you showcase the customer journey? Is there something about your process that makes it unique? Again, don't forget to explain your thoughts for how you use the customer journey map and what you're trying to capture throughout the process.

While there are some common threads to every portfolio, remember your portfolio should showcase who you are. Below are some examples of XD portfolios. If you want to learn more about how to teach your students using portfolios, check out our course 1Take: Creating Amazing Portfolios with Google Sites.

Danielle Thompson - Designers | Toptal
Toptal’s designers deliver results for clients. See why top companies and startups trust Toptal for their mission-critical projects.
Emi Lantz - UX Designer from Saint Paul
Emi Lantz practices UX Design and Digital Strategy with an emphasis on how it meets practical business needs in execution, conversion and usability.
Ljubomir Bardzic - Portfolio
I’m a freelance designer and for the last 8 years I have been helping startups deliver better experiences across Android, iOS and Web.
portfoliosXDprofessional

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webs was in education for nearly 10 years. she left education and became a software developer. she’s currently a senior product owner at edmentum as well as the founder of studio w on w.