Inside UXfolio’s Review Feature: A Timeline of Challenges and Success

I might be biased, but I believe UXfolio was ahead of its time in recognizing the value of integrated reviews and feedback in a website builder. The Reviews feature was one of our first big releases, launching on July 24, 2018, just under two months after UXfolio debuted on May 29. This speaks volumes about how deeply our team regarded the role of reviews in improving portfolios, even when there was so much else to tackle.

About portfolio reviews

UX portfolio reviews are a process where UX designers gather feedback on their portfolios, often from mentors, peers, or senior professionals, to refine their work and presentation. These reviews focus on the storytelling behind case studies, the clarity of the design process, and the impact of the solutions provided

 For job-seeking UX designers, portfolio reviews are critical because they help uncover blind spots and polish their presentation to align with industry expectations. By applying actionable feedback, designers can better showcase their problem-solving abilities, communicate their design decisions effectively, and build confidence before submitting their portfolios to potential employers.

In a competitive job market, a well-reviewed portfolio can make the difference between landing an interview and being overlooked.

When there’s a need, there’s an opportunity

Our team realized early on that structured feedback would bring huge benefits, both for UXfolio users and for the business:

1. Better portfolios: Great feedback leads to stronger portfolios.
2. Increased confidence: When users apply feedback, they feel more confident about their work.
3. Stronger advocacy: Increased confidence and higher-quality portfolios lead to greater satisfaction, making users more likely to continue using UXfolio and recommend it to others.

This was a win-win situation. From the start, UXfolio’s mission has been to help UX designers create better portfolios that emphasize the story behind their designs. By empowering them with tools to improve and build confidence in their portfolio, we are also encouraging organic growth, as those users are more likely to recommend UXfolio to others, keep their subscriptions active, or return to UXfolio when they need a portfolio.

Furthermore, a review feature was the ideal response to a very specific and common issue identified in our initial user interviews. Designers wanted feedback but didn’t know how to get around it: Who should they ask? How should they structure requests to receive actionable feedback? What format works? And so on. These challenges made it clear that we needed to create a solution to simplify, streamline, and integrate the review process into the portfolio building process.

The demand was there—it was time to make it happen.

The first iteration: a struggle but a start

The initial version of the Review feature was quite basic, but it served its purpose: validating the user need in vivo. We added a button labeled "Ask for Review" next to the "Publish" button in the case study editor menu. Clicking it brought up a simple confirmation popup. In the background, our designer, Simi (Klaudia Simon) received an email containing the user’s name, case study URL, and email address. She then typed up a review using a structured template and sent it in a reply email.

message.subject = "Ask for project review"

message.text = "Hello there,\n\n Please review my project: $projectUrl\n Here is my email address: ${principal.name}\n\n Many thanks."

This is far from scalable

At the time, less than 2 months after launch, our user base was small enough for this manual solution to work, though it was far from scalable. Our sole designer took on the monumental task of writing these reviews single-handedly. It was far from an ideal process, but it confirmed that our users valued the idea.

So, we could move forward to something much more ambitious.

Even this initial, primitive version of the feature was met with positive response

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The shift to Community Reviews

The overwhelmingly positive response to the initial version validated not just the feature’s necessity but its potential as a differentiator. None of our competitors offered anything remotely similar, so we decided to double down and develop a manageable and scalable version: Community Reviews.

Who will write the reviews?

Relying solely on one designer to write all the reviews was unsustainable, so we faced a critical question: who would take on this task? After brainstorming, the answer became clear: our users could review each other’s portfolios. By creating a community-powered system, designers could give, receive, and apply feedback without ever leaving the platform.

The Karma points system

But this raised another problem: how do we ensure that people don’t abuse this system? We had to make sure that people not only ask, but also give reviews. To ensure fairness and engagement, we introduced a simple but effective system:

• Give reviews to earn Karma points.
• Spend Karma points to request reviews.
  
  • 1 Karma point = 1 review given.
  • 1 review request = 2 Karma points (aka 2 reviews given).

This reciprocity ensured that users were motivated to both contribute and benefit from the system.

Introducing Expert Reviews

Feedback revealed that our subscribers wanted to have the option to ask for reviews from our senior-level designer. But we needed a sustainable approach. Thus, the concept of Expert Reviews was born. These reviews were more in-depth and written by our senior designer but required users to have an active UXfolio Premium subscription, and the review cost 10 Karma points, making the load manageable.

Iterating toward success

Our archives reveal that the Community Review feature went through seven iterations, each informed by user feedback from usability tests. Here are the most notable differences between the first and final versions:

• Expert Reviews reintroduced: Although not part of the original plan, Expert Reviews were brought back in a stricter format because users had grown accustomed to them, as explained earlier.
• Simplifying the interface: Test participants found the initial review writing mode overwhelming, with its large text box and numerous checkboxes in the first step. To address this, the flow was broken into 3 steps, reducing cognitive load.
• Warmup step added: Instead of diving straight into writing, reviewers first completed a warmup step (Step 1) with checkboxes. These checkboxes were strategic, with three benefits: encouraging them to carefully read the case study, leading to more thoughtful reviews, and making the process feel less daunting.
• Structured feedback prompts: The final version replaced the large freestyle text box with a structured step (Step 2), prompting reviewers to list three positives and three negatives about the case study. This change made the feedback more actionable and further simplified the review writing process.

By the final iteration, the review process was far more user-friendly, and feedback quality had improved significantly.

The finished Community Review flow

After extensive testing, we finalized a review flow that became the foundation of this feature from 2019 to 2024. Here’s how it worked:

1. Requesting a review: Users could request a case study review using a button in the case study editor’s menu. They would then choose between a Community or Expert Review, with the interface displaying how many Karma points each option required and their current balance. From this step, users could:
   
   • Cancel and return to the editor.
   • Request a Community Review for 2 Karma points.
   • Request an Expert Review for 10 Karma points.
   • Visit the Reviews page to earn more Karma points by writing reviews.
2. Community Reviews: If users chose this option, their case study appeared on the Reviews page, waiting for other users to provide feedback and earn Karma points.
3. Expert Reviews: For this option, our designer received an email with the request details and wrote the review using a dedicated Review account.
4. Writing a review: Users who opted to write a review were redirected to the Reviews page, where they could select a case study. Once selected, they followed a guided flow:
   
   • Step 1: Read the case study and check off any missing essential parts from a predefined list.
   • Step 2: Write three positives and three negatives about the case study.
   • Step 3: Review and refine the generated draft, which combined the input from the previous steps.

Once submitted, the feedback appeared on a dedicated screen for the case study’s owner, making it easy to access and apply.

Fading into the background

By 2024, while the core flow remained intact, the feature had faded into the background. As the team focused on UXfolio’s website-building tools, reviews became neglected—patched when necessary but never prioritized. Eventually, it became the product’s forgotten corner, something both the team and the users avoided.

Reviving the Review feature in 2024

In 2024, our team split into three groups to support a new strategy:

1. Simplicity: Streamlining the product for ease of use.
2. Differentiation: Introducing standout features unique to UXfolio.
3. Growth: Developing features with clear potential to attract and retain users.

Around this time, our UX researcher, Andris (András Frank), conducted a large-scale discovery research to find out “what are the most pressing pain points junior UX designers face when trying to get hired in the industry” and to “find out if there is a specific pain point worth building a new feature/product around.” András conducted 19 semi-structured interviews with eye-opening results.

This discovery research revealed that the need for portfolio feedback hadn’t diminished—if anything, it had grown. Therefore, there was a huge growth opportunity in a review feature. And so we had an interesting situation at hand: UXfolio had a review feature but it was in a rather bad state quality-wise, and its  concept was also outdated.

Reimaging reviews with the power of research

Our Growth team’s product designer, Réka Nagy, embraced and championed the idea of a better review feature. She started conducting phase 2 interviews, focusing on UX portfolio feedback. Now we started seeing the nuances: UX designers want portfolio and case study reviews more than ever, but their challenges have shifted:

1. UX designers want structured, actionable feedback from people they trust: mentors, seniors, and teachers. Peer-to-peer reviews developed a bad reputation because of bootcamps, where students were forced to do these without any experience, structure, or quality control. (“Blind leading the blind,” as an interview participant put it.)
2. Managing and writing reviews is one of the biggest struggles. The most common workaround is to take screenshots of the relevant portfolio section, paste those into a Google Doc, then leave notes and suggestions under them. This method is uncomfortable for both parties, the reviewer and the receiver. Which makes the whole experience unpleasant; most people don’t like to inconvenience others, especially not people in authority.

Thanks to Réka’s and Andris’ findings, we started seeing this feature in a different light: it has become a promise instead of a problem child. This goes to show that research is more than just data collection. It has the potential and power to do a complete 180 on an entire team’s mindset and preconceived notions. Research is not just a “product design tool,” it is one of the most powerful management tools. 

Two ways ahead: fix or build

With the entire team on board, we started exploring our options and there were two ways ahead:

1. We fix the existing Review feature and update it to today’s standards.
2. We build a new Review feature from scratch.

At this point we turned our heads towards the Growth team developer, Dani (Dániel Kincses), for a technical point of view. Based on Réka’s initial ideas for the feature, Dani preferred the second option, both for time and quality assurance. So, we ditched he old Community Review feature, and began building the new Review feature from scratch.

Reframing the Review feature

Réka and the team completely reimagined the Review feature. The new approach focused on solving the issues and requirements that Réka’s research identified:

• Targeted Feedback: allowing users to collect reviews from specific people in their network, like mentors, even if they weren’t UXfolio users. This meant opening up UXfolio to non-registered users.
• Portfolio-wide reviews: expanding the review feature beyond case studies to include comments on entire portfolios, such as About pages and landing pages. Personal-professional branding has become more important than ever, so users expected a holistic approach to reviews.
• Contextual comments: enabling reviewers to leave feedback directly on specific sections of a portfolio.
• Emoji Reactions: making it easier to give quick, positive feedback without the need for lengthy explanations or cliché sentences.

The new review flow

Throughout many iterations fueled by user tests and ideation sessions, we finalized the new flow.

With a unique shareable link, reviewers could access a portfolio, navigate its pages, and leave structured feedback. Review options became more diverse:

1. General overview: high-level feedback on the portfolio as a whole, with prompts to identify positives and areas for improvement.
2. Section-level comments: contextual comments tied directly to specific portfolio sections. The reviewer can tag these comments into 4 categories: Design, Structure, Imagery, and Content.
   
   1. The reviewee can use these tags to filter the comments based on topics, for a more focused portfolio editing approach.
3. Quick Reactions: section-level, emoji-based feedback for faster, intuitive responses.

This new approach not only modernized the Review feature but also made it a seamless and valuable tool for both reviewers and designers. The team transformed it from a neglected tool into one of UXfolio’s flagship offerings.

As a leader, seeing how proud my team is of the end product (to this day, months after its release) is one of the best feelings ever.

Interview with Réka, the designer of the Review feature

Finally, I’d like to share a short interview with UXfolio Growth team designer, Réka:

Ákos: Can you detail in  your own words why we decided to work on a Review feature?

Réka: Andris, our researcher, conducted general discovery to identify the biggest challenges junior designers face in portfolio building. Feedback came up frequently as a major topic and struggle, so we pursued it further with targeted research. This included conversations with junior designers, potential reviewers, mentors, and senior designers to understand both sides of giving and receiving feedback.

Ákos: Why was it better for us to build it from scratch instead of reworking the existing Review feature?

Réka: Initially, we analyzed usage data for the old review feature and found very few users engaging with it. After interviewing those who had used it, we discovered they loved the concept but found the feedback unhelpful. The quality of feedback was low because it was often provided by peers at the same experience level. Additionally, the old system was closed off, preventing juniors from using the feature with mentors or senior designers for higher-quality feedback. Based on this, we decided to start from scratch and open the feature to a broader community, including senior UX designers and mentors, to ensure meaningful feedback.

Ákos: From a design perspective, what was the biggest challenge?

Réka: The main challenge was designing for two distinct user roles: reviewers and portfolio owners. The feature had to make it easier for reviewers to give feedback and for portfolio owners to receive actionable feedback. We structured the interface to minimize cognitive load for reviewers, for example, by dividing feedback into positives and negatives. Commenting was also a significant addition—it saves reviewers time and effort while ensuring designers receive specific and actionable feedback.

Ákos: If you could go back in time, would you change anything about the process or the first version of the feature?

Réka: Some features, like comment resolving and filtering, were left out in the first phase and added later. Comment-labels were also added in the second phase. With these reviewers could label the topic of their comment, such as Design, Structure, or Imagery, and users could filter the comments based on these. These omissions were addressed in subsequent updates, but including them from the start would have been ideal.

Ákos: What do you see as the next steps for this feature?

Réka: Amplifying the feature with AI would be amazing. While AI wouldn't replace writing, it could assist mentors by editing feedback or creating overviews based on comments. There's also potential for AI to generate feedback entirely within the feature. This approach would enhance the overall review process without compromising quality.

Ákos: Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Réka: Yes, I’d like to highlight Dani (Dániel Kincses), our developer. One of the biggest challenges was opening up the feature to unregistered users. This was a first for UXfolio, as none of our other features were accessible without registration. Despite being technically demanding, this openness was essential to achieving the goals of the new review feature, and Dani did an excellent job.

Ákos: Couldn’t agree more. Thank you very much for the insights, Réka!

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