Design Interviews | Portfolio Review

This is an opportunity for designers to see your experience and how you think. You can prepare the interviewers for the presentation by breaking down how you’ll structure it.

Be sure to Highlight

  • Product thinking, empathy, and creativity (to solve a problem)
  • User and market research (interviewing members of your target audience and turning data points into actionable requirements for your project)
  • Low, medium, and high fidelity mockups to create user interfaces and interactions
  • Actively testing your solution and getting user feedback to further improve upon the product

Content

Technical Skills

  • Concise overview of project context: problem statement + objective, tools, role, background research and site visits
  • Prove your foundational skills and knowledge; employers should feel confident immediately adding you to a project
    • Interior design: AutoCAD, Revit, Sketchup, Rhino
    • Product design: low-fidelity prototyping, high-fidelity prototyping. 3D printing, wood works, laser cutting
    • UIUX design: Figma, Adobe Suite
  • Going deep into just a few projects is better than having many shallow ones
    • Interior design: floor plan, site map, persona and journey mapping, programming document, bubble diagram, prototypes, 3D model renderings, photoshop renderings
    • Product design: user research, market research, prototypes, user testing, product mockups, demo videos
    • UIUX design: user research, market research, relation diagramming, persona and journey mapping, wireframing, mockups, photoshop usage

Personal Brand

  • Each company and role has a specific set or qualifications and responsibilities they expect
  • In general, demonstrate strong research skills, client-orientation, collaboration skills, adaptability, initiative-taking mindset, and sense of industry knowledge/position
  • Parsons and SCAD usually have a 3 words in particular that describe who you are and making sure that it’s represented in your portfolio
  • What unique perspective do you bring to the table
  • Show personal design and thinking process
  • “About me” page should be unique

Have Enough Projects

  • Show breadth of work
  • Not only research or technical drawings but a variety of different things that you have accomplished
  • 2-3 big projects in the industry that you’re looking to join but definitely have some variety

Project Presentation Flow

  • What was the user problem?
  • Why was it important problem to solve (from a client or business perspective, if possible)?
  • Why did you choose this project?
  • How did you make decisions?
  • How did you evaluate your decisions and/or measure success? What was the outcome?
  • What challenges did you encounter and how did you overcome them?
  • What did you learn during this project? Either reflectively or skills you intentionally built.
  • What didn’t go to plan and how did you bounce back?
  • What did your teammates rely on you for or appreciate about your work?
  • What would you do differently next time?
  • What would you do differently if you had to do this project again?
  • What did you take away from this project?
  • How did you validate your design decisions?

Tips & Advice

  • Tell a story; know your portfolio
  • Face portfolio to presenter
  • Make a slide deck
  • Have a solid flow and clear process; don’t jump around the project timeline
  • Have printed copy of resume ready

Document Credit:

Mar 2025
Cornell Human Ecology • 1203 MVR • hecec.humec.cornell.edu

Want more interview guidance? Visit the Interview Module in the Career Development Toolkit.