There seems to be a taste that employers want to see the process of how you got there… to your slick, polished design. Really?! Do you?! How much time have you got?!
How much time do you invest in looking at a UI/UX designer’s portfolio? 5 minutes in between meetings? 1 hour for an interview.
I have designed hundreds of digital products in my 20+ years of work. How can I possibly do that? Talk you through EVERY step of every decision. There are trillions. Some big, some small, some you have in the shower. Same as for your career, probably.
You want to see the designs/journeys that didn’t make the cut? Why?
For some projects, the first mock-up is the winner; for others, it takes hundreds of iterations. What insight does it give you about my ability to create? Every discarded design comes with a story. Do you have the time and capacity to hear it?
Let me also ask you… Do you save all your discarded Excel and text files and emails, and are you OK to share them? Why do you ask this of a designer?
If you have created a slick, polished design… for a client, for money, or even for free, you have listened to every viewer’s opinion… minimum 1, most likely 20 or more… (including Karen/Bob, the difficult colleague/client/fill-in-your-own), explained your thought process to everyone, defended it, amended your design hundreds of times (even when you know it’s gonna look crap for half of them). That’s what we do as designers. It’s a given. Multiply that per project.
Back to the question… Do you honestly want to know?! Get yourself a six-pack of beer. It’s going to be a long day.