The design portfolio bug in 2026
Whoever opens a portfolio scans it. The most common mistake is the order: process before the result.
Whoever opens my portfolio decides in two minutes whether it's worth a conversation. They don't read the whole case, they glance for one thing: does this solve my problem? The average portfolio answers it badly, because it's still written like a diary. Everything the designer did, in chronological order, with the result way down at the end, exhausted, after fifteen discovery screens.
The result comes first
I rewrote my cases backwards. Start with the result, then work back and fill in only the moments that mattered for it to exist. About 80% of the discovery gets left out: it happened, but the reader doesn't need it to understand what changed.
PAR+I instead of "challenge → solution"
The mold I use in every case now:
- P: point of view and problem. What the thesis was.
- A: the actions I took, and only the ones that counted.
- R: result. A number, before and after, what changed that's measurable.
- +I: impact beyond the number, on the process, the team, the way of working.
Seniority shows in the decision
The signal is the complexity of the decision: the trade-off I considered and dropped, why I picked one path and not the other. Any tool spits out pretty screens today; whoever reads the case is measuring the judgment behind them.