The screenshot portfolio problem

I always do a little double-take when I see posts like, “Need a designer. Drop four screenshots.”

Four screenshots of what? Are we hiring based on color choices? Taste? How neatly someone crops a Figma frame?

A beautiful screen tells me almost nothing about the designer behind it. I don’t know what they walked into, what constraints they were working within, what they changed, or why. Maybe they solved the hardest problem in the company. Maybe they made a nice gradient. The screenshot can’t tell me.

I understand why we do it. Visuals are fast. Case studies take work. I’m guilty of showing the polished stuff too.

But most of the work I want to hire for doesn’t photograph particularly well.

I want to know what was broken. What did you notice that everyone else missed? What did you fight to remove? How did you convince the team to let go of the feature they loved?

The designer I want to hire is the one who can explain the mess behind the nice screen.