Portfolio review
Your portfolio is a design test. Here's your grade.
A portfolio is the one interface where the design is the qualification. A recruiter gives it thirty seconds; a client gives it less. Whatever they experience in that window — clarity or clutter, confidence or hedging — is what they'll assume your work is like.
Friends will tell you it looks great. UX Critic won't. Upload your portfolio's home page or a case study and get a scored, specific review of how it reads to someone who owes you nothing.
The checklist
What an honest portfolio review actually inspects
- The thirty-second answer
- Who you are, what you do, and whether you're hireable — answerable from the first screen alone.
- Work-first hierarchy
- The projects should be the protagonist. Long manifestos and animated intros make visitors pay before seeing the goods.
- Case-study framing
- Outcomes and decisions, not deliverable dumps — a wall of final screens says 'I make images', not 'I solve problems'.
- Typography as evidence
- On a designer's own site, type choices are a work sample. Inconsistent scale or three typefaces contradicts every case study claim.
- Thumbnail consistency
- Project cards with mismatched crops, styles, and densities read as a feed, not a curated body of work.
- Contact friction
- The hire-me action should be one obvious click from anywhere — not an email address hidden on an About page.
- Curation discipline
- Six strong projects beat fourteen mixed ones. The weakest piece sets the perceived floor.
- Self-description clarity
- 'Multidisciplinary creative technologist' filters out the people trying to hire you. Plain names for what you do win.
“Your headline calls you a 'multidisciplinary designer crafting digital experiences.' So is everyone else in the stack of tabs this recruiter has open. The project two scrolls down — the one with the shipped product and the numbers — is your actual headline.”
Which critic to put on it
- The Perfectionist holds your portfolio to the standard your portfolio claims — craft, restraint, and one clear story.
- The Advocate checks that the site works for every reviewer — including the one skimming it on a phone between meetings.
How it works
Drop in a screenshot — PNG or JPG, live product or Figma export. Pick a critic. In about a minute you get a scored report: a verdict out of 10, per-dimension scores, and every finding pinned to the exact region of the screenshot it lives on. Your first 3 reports each month are free; Pro ($10/month) adds all three critics and AI before/after mockups of the top recommendations.
FAQ
Questions, answered
Should I review the home page or a case study?
Start with the home page — it decides whether anyone reads further. Then run your flagship case study as a second report. The two scores usually disagree, and the gap tells you where to spend your effort.
Does this work for developer portfolios?
Yes. Developer portfolios fail the same ways: unclear positioning, buried contact actions, project lists with no hierarchy. The critics review the communication, not the profession.
Isn't design taste subjective?
Style is subjective; clarity isn't. Whether a stranger can tell what you do, find your best work, and contact you — that's testable, and it's what gets portfolios rejected before taste ever enters the room.
Keep reading
Your design has problems. Find out which ones.
First 3 reports are free. No card required.
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