Designers and developers working on their projects, have a lot of questions: What do our users expect to see on this screen? How are users supposed to interact with our product? What should our onboarding feel like? These questions are commonly asked during product development. Every team wants to reduce the risk of incorrect design decisions and as the complexity of products increases, the digital product design industry puts usability practitioners in high demand. Usability practitioners are people who help product teams make informed decisions. In most organizations, the primary role of usability experts is design validation—making sure that a product is usable. But many usability practitioners (particularly those who are new to the field) complain that product teams don’t act on their research results. While this could be due to many different issues, most often it is due to poor usability reports; if product teams have trouble understanding findings, or don’t know what to do with the findings, they’ll simply ignore them. That’s why it so important to make reports actionable. In this article, we’ll share eleven tips that help usability practitioners to reach this goal.

Back when I first learned to code, and started looking for freelance web design projects, I felt like I was in a Catch-22. My portfolio was totally empty; but I couldn’t fill it with impressive projects without any clients. It’s a tough spot to be in in an industry where your work is much more important than your skillset. You don’t land big clients by listing your coding chops on a resume. You get those high-paying jobs by showing them what you can do. In other words, clients want to see proof of what you can create for them before they give you a check. But after working with freelance clients as a beginner, and coaching hundreds of students through the process of getting their first clients, I can tell you that building an impressive portfolio as a beginner is totally possible.