Turning Internal Research into a Portfolio Project

How do you show internal research about your company in a portfolio piece?

As Designers, we want to be sought out for how we think, not just what we produce. To do this, we need to visualize how we think. We should use our creative talents to show this thinking.

In our UX research course, students plan, organize, conduct, and synthesize research around a design problem. They take real-world pain points from their positions and turn them into opportunities. These opportunities are often internal and related to their companies' design process.

Chang identified some opportunities for adding more research to his company’s process, which he chose to work on during the six weeks of the course. Many of our graduates make portfolio pieces from this research, and Chang’s project is an excellent example of how to turn an internal company research project into a portfolio piece.

Here are a few of our favorite screens on sensemaking and problem statements:

If you want to take some inspiration from Chang’s portfolio, take a look at the full portfolio project here:

Chang Jiang is an engineer turned UX designer. He is currently working on e-learning, helping companies improve their employee training. He is also an advocate for design systems and is always looking for opportunities to learn more about them.