Building My Portfolio Through Competitions

As a designer, people often say,

“You must have a strong portfolio”

I completely agree but I’ve also learned that building or updating a portfolio is not as easy as it sounds.

Most of the time, the challenge is not about skill. It’s about time and energy.

Between a full-time job, personal life, and sometimes the pressure of looking for a better role or the next career step, sitting down to create or refresh a portfolio often ends up at the bottom of the to-do list. We tell ourselves, “I’ll do it this weekend,” and then suddenly it’s three months later.

At some point, I realized I needed a different approach. Something that would not only give me portfolio material, but also push me to actually finish it.

That’s when I found something that worked really well for me:

building my portfolio through competitions design challenges and hackathons.

Why Competitions Work for Me

For me, joining a competition is like setting a public deadline with built-in accountability.

If I win, that’s a bonus.

But my main goal is the portfolio itself: real problems, real constraints, real teamwork, and real outcomes.

In a competition, I can choose my role in the team according to my strengths whether that’s as a product designer, UX designer, or someone who connects strategy and execution. This makes the final output very relevant to the kind of work I want to show in my portfolio.

Here’s how I usually approach it:

1. I look for competition information on social media design challenges, hackathons, or product competitions.
2. When I find something interesting, I share it with my friends, especially those I already know and trust.
3. If we’re all excited about it, we quickly form a team.
4. We start brainstorming ideas and possible solutions for the problem statement.
5. We then turn those ideas into something concrete: user journeys, wireframes, designs, prototypes, pitch decks whatever the competition requires.
6. We follow all the stages of the competition until the end, from submission to presentations.
7. After the competition is over, I usually write an article on LinkedIn to share our idea, solution, process, and introduce the team members.

By the end of this journey, I don’t just have “competition experience” I have a complete case study that’s perfect for my portfolio.

What I Gain From Competitions

Joining competitions has given me much more than just slides and screens to show.

Here are some of the things I’ve gained:

1. A solid portfolio piece that is built together with a team, from idea to solution.
2. New skills and knowledge from teammates with different backgrounds and expertise.
3. Real collaboration experience not just working alone in Figma, but building something together under time pressure.
4. Stronger friendships, because we’re working on something meaningful and challenging in a positive way.
5. A powerful motivation to finish, because I’m not only responsible for myself, but also for the team.
6. In some cases, the joy of becoming a semifinalist or getting recognition from the competition organizers.

These experiences feel more alive and richer than creating a fake project alone. They come with context: constraints, deadlines, feedback, and sometimes even judges’ comments.

Competitions I’ve Joined

Over the past few years, I’ve joined several events, such as:

1. Flip UI/UX Challenge 2024
2. BI–OJK Hackathon 2025
3. Devpost Gemini 3 Hackathon 2026

Each of these competitions has contributed something different to my growth new ways of thinking, new collaborators, new problem spaces and all of them have become valuable material for my portfolio.

Is This Approach for Everyone?

Maybe not. Some designers prefer to build case studies quietly in their own time, or by rewriting past projects from work. That’s completely valid.

But for me, this method works because I like collaboration, clear deadlines, and real-world constraints. Competitions give me all of that in one package. They turn the abstract idea of “I should update my portfolio” into a specific, time-bound, and social commitment.

If you’re a designer who struggles to make time for your portfolio, or you feel bored creating fictional projects alone, maybe this approach could be worth trying:

join a competition, form a team, solve a problem together and let the portfolio grow from there.

In the end, the goal is the same: a portfolio that reflects who you are as a designer today.

The path you choose to build it can be as collaborative and exciting as you want it to be.