GenAI in a factory, design recruitment and a new partnership.
Learn about our GenAI event, design recruitment & portfolios and learn about our latest partnership.
Hello everyone,
We have a lot of exciting news to share, so let’s get started.
MT Generate
Mark November 6 on your calendar because we are closing the year with our biggest event yet: MT Generate.
This time, we are taking over the iconic Vasco da Gama factory in Matosinhos, a historic space with Art Deco style and industrial roots that set the perfect scene for our GenAI event. The speaker lineup will be announced soon.
Early bird tickets available now: https://luma.com/mt_generate.
Volunteers
When we asked for volunteers, we never expected so many people to step up. It was absolutely incredible to see so many people who wanted to help out and be part of this community.
Honestly, this is what community is about: giving, growing, and caring 💜
Soon we’ll introduce you to our newest volunteers.
JuniorAI
We’re super excited to announce that matosinhos.tech just teamed up with JuniorAI, a student-driven AI Junior initiative, powered by University of Porto students.
Founded in August 2024, JuniorAI bridges academic AI research with real business impact through fast, creative, and purposeful AI consulting. They work as a nonprofit, reinvesting all revenue into member development, offering everything from AI strategy and proofs of concept to full implementations.
We can’t wait to share more about this community with you.
Thanks also to our sponsor DeHouse for the wonderful space.
Now, let’s learn about design recruitment.
Design recruitment & portfolios
I just went through a hiring process and the AI-generated portfolios and case studies were everywhere, as expectable.
At first glance everything looked polished. Clean structure, minimal interface, good-enough thinking. But this makes things harder for the recruiters, because we can’t just skim through the applications by glance. We need to deep dive and scratch the surface to see the designer beyond the AI or the template.
This made me reflect on a few things.
On one hand, I miss the days when the portfolio really reflected a designer’s work. We could instantly recognise their visual references, their skill, their capacity to resume information and to communicate key decisions properly. Now, I can’t easily access this skills: everything looks visually the same (even if it looks “better”), and the information is digested, compressed and cleaned up by AI. Using AI tools is great if we use it as a boost, but it won’t make any portfolio pop-up in the middle of dozens if used solo.
On the other hand, I can’t help but think about how low the bar was a few years ago (for several reasons, but let’s not follow that rabbit hole). In my first recruitment experiences, we were just hoping candidates could tell the difference between an iOS and Android app, had some basic visual skills or good taste, and hopefully some critical thinking. With that we could go a long way already! The market is though now. It’s getting more and more difficult to secure a job. But in a way, I am happy we are demanding more knowledge from product designers. From my perspective, this might be a sign of maturity within our industry.
So, if you’re a designer trying to improve your portfolio, let me share some of my favourite hints on how to make an appealing one:
Explain the problem and solution upfront.
The title of the project and the first paragraph have to be enough for a recruiter to have a glimpse of what you did. Remember that recruiters receive dozens of portfolios to review, so they will only read your case study IF that looks interesting right away. Don’t expect them to scroll through pages to reach your conclusions.
Show your visuals right away!
Visual skills are still a must-have and we designers are highly visual people! So use that to your advantage and hook your recruiter from the beginning with some very clean and tidy visuals. With so many sharp templates and AI generated portfolios, there is no space for mistakes as bad typography and poor layouts.
Select your content and reduce the UX research part.
Unless you’re applying for a specific UX research job, you don’t need to add every-single-research-piece you did. Avoid the temptation to explain all the design process (that at this point already looks like a recipe book) and focus on key deliverables. The right time to present more details, or perhaps an extended version of it, is during an interview.
Curate your deliverables properly.
A raw screenshot of a whiteboard session or workshop might not add value to your case study, and it will also be unappealing. It might be a better strategy to just represent what came out of that in a cleaner, more digestible way. You might also want to include some deliverables that were not thought to be very aesthetic - sitemaps, flows or user types, etc. Redesign and polish before you publish them.
Don’t let your portfolio blend - add personality to it.
If your already comfortable with the content you have curated, and you check all the boxes above, the next step is adding that WOW effect. Don’t let your portfolio look like everyone else’s - it should be entirely yours. Add some lessons learned for some projects or create an “About me” page that really reflects your interests and personality. As far as these details don’t overshadow your work, they will give your portfolio that final spark.
Notice that I never said you should avoid AI. All those AI tools out there are great if you can use them properly and create something meaningful and tailored to your own experience. They can’t, on their own, create a personal and memorable portfolio, unless you infuse and prompt your own insights into it.
If you rely only on them , you will end up with a pretty portfolio that lacks engagement.
In a tough market, you need to be able to remain optimistic, and focus on what you can control — your portfolio and the way your future colleagues perceive you.
Recruiters are learning to look past the portfolio gloss. They are trying to understand what’s AI output and what’s the designer’s genuine ideas. The gems are still out there — they are just a little harder to spot today.
With this being said: I am opening my adplist mentoring again, so if you need mentoring or portfolio review, just drop me a message!
Note: all imagens are AI generated