The Handcuffed UX Portfolio

I have always been in a pickle showing my work. I have had the extreme pleasure of working with some incredible organizations and some amazingly talented individuals, tackling some really gnarly UX problems. But, in all of those encounters, I have been a contracted consultant. As a contracted consultant, what I am capable of doing and how I do it is the product that my employer is selling. So, in almost all cases, I can’t share that. It gives away our “secret sauce” and makes it difficult to compete for future contracts. In many cases, my work becomes a “past performance,” used to showcase my employer’s capabilities as part of a proposal to win new work (or retain existing work) against our competitors. So, I get it. But, what a pain for me!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this situation, this means that I’ve signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) and am bound by it and various other policies as contingencies on my employment. These days, this also includes strict rules related to copyright, intellectual property, and social media posting. It’s an industry standard for folks like me and includes limitations like:

• Do not disclose the customer’s name or use their logo.
• Never share information about a project or engagement (often including the challenge, our methods or how we approached the challenge) as this could disclose our competitive advantage or be a breach of contract.

While I understand and respect the need for these limitations, they do create a series of real challenges for me as an individual professional. As aptly penned by Harish Venkatesann of UXPin, “In today’s design world, it’s a common saying that portfolios matter more than degrees.” Our work is our currency. It’s how we prove that we aren’t just blowing smoke. As a professional, it is how I demonstrate credibility as I seek engagement in the UX community. And, here’s the mindblower, I need to demonstrate credibility and be actively engaged in my profession to remain marketable by my employer. So, I’m handcuffed.

The question is, how to deal with this problem. Well, you could avoid signing the NDA in the first place, but that might mean that you don’t get the job and miss out on the opportunity to work on some really killer UX projects. If you’re already bound by an NDA, you could ask your employer to sign a counter NDA that allows you to privately or publically showcase a controlled subset of your work; a bit of a non-starter for employees of big employers. In my case, avoiding signing the NDA or asking my employer to sign a counter NDA is really not an option. If it’s an option for you, there are your keys to the handcuffs. Go grab ’em.

So, what if that’s also not an option for you? You could spend a lot of time and energy “scrubbing” your portfolio case studies by removing customer names and blurring (or fictionalizing) logos or other proprietary information. But, the argument has been made that this is more frustrating to readers than not having anything shared at all because you are redacting all of the “good stuff” that makes your case study compelling and worth sharing. I also don’t want to fictionalize or water down my work to comply with these agreements. I feel that it misrepresents the work, in addition to being counterproductive to the purposes of sharing it.

“How would you feel if you were reading a book and one of the crucial pages got missing? Or even worse, the author decided to blur it?”

– From the post How to show NDA protected Work on your Online Portfolio by Martijn van den Broeck

And the creme de la creme of the “good stuff”? That’s the business case, my friends. If we are user experience designers, we are good at solving problems. So, the most important part of our portfolio should showcase our ability to be problem solvers, highlighting the problems and our approach to solving them rather than only focusing on the end solution.

As a hiring manager, I cannot agree more with this approach to UX portfolio development. It’s the #1 thing I want to see. I need to see this currency. It’s often how we evaluate candidates and determine if they truly have the skills represented by the myriad of buzz words on their resume. I want to see proof that they can walk the walk, not just talk the talk. I want to see that they have made an impact to make UX better for people. I also want to reciprocate. I want to demonstrate to my prospective candidate that they are joining a talented team dedicated to making UX better. I want to show them that we can meet them in their expertise and that we offer challenging and exciting opportunities to apply their skills. But, alas, those business problems and our approach to solving them, that’s the proprietary intellectual property that forms a keen competitive advantage for my employer. I can’t share that stuff and I understand why my prospective candidates can’t share it either. It gives me a very bad impression, as a hiring manager, if candidates are willing and ready to break their NDAs. I don’t want to hire an employee who will violate our NDA and I don’t want to send the message that I violate mine. So, handcuffed, again.

Many advocate doing side work or projects outside of your NDA that will allow you to showcase your skills and impact. Unfortunately, many contracted consultants are also bound by non-compete agreements that prevent us from doing that sort of work. When it is possible to do the work, in my opinion, this option is only appropriate for UXers who are early in their career. For the more senior and experienced professionals that I would like to hire, the side work will never be capable of showcasing the true depth, complexity or impact of the billable work done under the NDA. Again, this misrepresents the talent, skills, and capabilities of the professional in their portfolio. Here come those handcuffs again.

So, now what? Sounds pretty dire right? Well, this is where we have to get creative in how we demonstrate our capabilities and build credibility. The more I pontificate on this, the more I come back around to organic personal relationships and classic networking.

Nearly 20 years ago, when I was approaching graduation from college, my mom handed me a copy of What Color is Your Parachute?. I am pleasantly surprised to see that this book still seems to be “the world’s most popular job-search book” and is still being updated yearly. I haven’t read this year’s version, but I still remember the lessons in building, maintaining and growing your professional network from my ancient copy of the book. This book formed in me the innate understanding that opportunities come from the people you know and the people who know you, and have first-hand experiences with your work. Now that I am a hiring manager, I have a fresh perspective on that understanding.

Back before the dawn of the internet, the concept that your opportunities were coupled to your network was pretty scary. With social media, it is increasingly easier to build a network. But, maintaining that network and empowering them with first-hand experiences of your work is still a challenge for people like me, who have a handcuffed portfolio. The interesting bit is that the organic individual personal relationships that grow over time still seems to be an excellent indicator of capabilities and credibility.

Here’s how this works. As a hiring manager, when I have a position opening, the first thing I do is reach out to people that I admire as having the skills and expertise that I am looking for. I know they have these skills because I’ve seen them first hand, most often because we have worked together under the same NDA. They have a network of individuals that they also admire as having those skills, based on their personal experience working with them (probably also under NDA!). They can recommend those people to me for my open position. I trust these people because I have seen their work and they know what I’m looking for.  Interviewing these individuals is the fastest and most effective way to fill my position. Almost always, I am able to find someone who will fit with my team when that person is personally recommended to me by someone I trust based on observed skills.

Not rocket science, right? This is just classic references. The important bit is that this practice is not dead. It may seem “old-fashioned,” but it is very much alive for folks with handcuffed portfolios. The power of the testimonial, the endorsement, and the recommendation can be critical in situations where you can’t show your work. Thankfully, now we have tools like the Skills & Endorsements and Recommendations features of LinkedIn that can help hiring managers to see this information more readily and dig deeper into “the network” to build confidence that a candidate can walk the walk.

As I’ve been working to architect a better hiring process, I’ve been doing some reading in this area. And, I think the handcuffed portfolio is also why I am starting to see job postings that request a link to a candidate’s Twitter feed or Pinterest boards. When a candidate can’t show their own work, feeds like these help hiring managers understand how a candidate thinks. It helps us to get a sense of the individual’s level of engagement in the industry and their awareness of important concepts, discussions and best practices. Its a nice little representation of the same skills communicated through a quality case-study based portfolio. It also gives us a snippet of writing style and collaborative spirit. If the candidate has a blog, that’s even better. It gives us an even clearer view into the mind of the candidate and the application of their knowledge, without compromising their NDA or other signed agreements.

When the network is dry, hiring managers are forced to hire “blind.” In other words, they use recruiters to try to find qualified people. In these cases, social media history and references can help to offset the lack of a rich portfolio of case studies. But, we still expect to see the handcuffed portfolio. As practitioners, we are never going to be able to get away from the need for portfolios in our field. So, we need to do the best that we can to share what we can, when we can. And, when we do that, we need to be clear about what we can share and can’t. I believe that being honest in your portfolio is crucial to representing yourself well. That may mean that I have to generalize my stories without watering them down or misrepresenting the work, which is challenging. But, I prefer to see it as a great differentiator in demonstrating my writing and communication skills.

In exchange for exciting and compelling work with real-world impact, I have given up my rights to share it or showcase my capabilities freely and openly on the internet. I do not want to violate agreements that I have signed and I do not want to misrepresent myself in diluted case studies. Occasionally, I have the opportunity to share case studies based on articles or presentations that I publish with my customers. When I can, I do that here on this website. Unfortunately, these are few and far between. So, in the space between, I will showcase my skills with deidentified stories from my private log of accomplishments. I will maintain my private log and the relationships with the people I collaborated with during those projects. I will take advantage of the opportunities that social media provides to actively participate in the community by sharing what I can and building a history of participation that demonstrates the value that I provide as a professional to make UX better for people. I hope that you’ll join me!

If you’re interested in seeing a handful of limited examples of my work that I can share, review the links below. If you see anything interesting, please reach out. I’d love to meet up, in person or virtually, for coffee or beers and discussion.