<aside> 🚫

This is a diagnostic, not a scorecard. There is no pass mark, and nothing here is worth adding to a case study if you cannot defend it out loud.

</aside>

<aside> 📋

What this is. A diagnostic a designer runs against their own portfolio a fortnight before an interview, to find the two or three gaps a panel will probe first.

What it cannot tell you. Whether the work was any good. This checks whether the work is legible: whether a reader who was not there can follow the problem, the evidence, the decision and the consequence without you in the room.

</aside>

<aside> 📄

Duplicate this page into your own Notion workspace so you can work in it. Use the "Duplicate" option from the page menu, then run the checklist inside your own copy.

</aside>

<aside> 🧭

How to use this

1. Duplicate this page. Run it against one case study at a time, not the whole portfolio at once.
2. Start with the project you would choose to talk about if the panel let you choose. That is where the gaps cost most.
3. Answer every item with yes, no, or not honestly enough. The third answer is the useful one.
4. Ignore your totals. Pick the two or three items whose absence a panel would notice first.
5. For each of those, decide whether you are changing the portfolio or preparing a sentence to say aloud. Both are legitimate answers. </aside>

<aside> 🗓

Run this a fortnight before an interview, not the night before. Rewriting framing takes an evening. Finding out what happened to a project after you left takes longer.

</aside>

The checklist

Forty-seven items across six sections. Set Case study so one copy of this database can cover several projects, group by Section to work through it in order, then filter to the gaps once you have been through everything once.

Portfolio checklist

What each section is testing

• 🧭 Section A: Framing (8 items)
• 🔍 Section B: Evidence (8 items)
• ⚖️ Section C: Decision (8 items)
• 📉 Section D: Consequence (8 items)
• 🖥 Section E: Presentation (8 items)
• 🔒 Section F: If the work is under NDA (7 items)

<aside> ⚠️

Redrawing an artefact yourself with invented content is legitimate and normal. Passing a reconstruction off as the original is not, and it is the kind of thing that surfaces later.

</aside>

The three-fix worksheet