Should I decide based on UI design samples — can portfolios be misleading?

Designers usually design for the perfect scenario: an 8-character username, a 1-line course title... In the real world, if a portfolio doesn't account for how a screen handles a 60-character course title or a lost internet connection, it's half-baked work. Always ask about edge cases.

Last year we paid 80.000 TL to sign with an agency purely because their portfolio looked so slick. When we handed their designs over to our dev team, we realized the buttons were too small to tap on mobile and they had used 15 different shades of gray across 20 screens. It delayed coding by 2 months.

Ask the agency straight up: "Can we download these three mobile apps from the app stores, or are they just concept mockups?" That one question filters out half the agencies on the market.

Portfolio showcase sites are full of unrealistic work. Building fantasy designs with zero legal constraints, no checkout flows, and no client pushback is totally different from building real commercial products. Functionality has to come before aesthetics.

ask for live links honestly if they can't provide one they either fought with the client or the dev couldn't code the design. both are bad looks for the agency.

When picking the first design agency for my startup, I fell in love with their 3D screen illustrations. We closed the deal, and our dev took one look and said "this animation will make the mobile web page take 6 seconds to load." We ended up scrapping the whole thing and going back to plain simple cards.

Adding technical acceptance criteria to your design contract—such as responsive breakpoints, a design system library, and at least 2 rounds of revisions during developer handoff—will prevent potential disputes down the road.

Three practical filters when picking a designer: 1) Number of actual live projects, 2) A clear commitment to deliver a cohesive design system with typography and color palettes, 3) Screens designed for errors, empty states, and text overflow scenarios.

The discussion got scattered, let me summarize. Every "we'll look at it later" in a meeting means unbilled work.

If you have questions, write them; I'll answer as best I can.

following.

We need to make a distinction here. The harder it is to reverse a decision, the slower you should make it.

Could you elaborate on that? Everything goes well for the first three months; problems arise in the fourth.

Let me summarize the topic, since several different answers were given. If it's your first time, start small; scaling comes later.

Proven by experience.

I have no experience with UI design samples so I'm asking. The answer varies greatly by industry; there is no one-size-fits-all rule.

That's all, sorry if I went on too long.

thanks that was the answer I was looikng for.

Let me clarify the technical side. honestly when you try to change everything at once, nothing settles.

Any unwritten clause becomes a point of disagreement later as both sides remember it differently. Of course it varies if your situation is different.

I'm curious too.

My questions are cleared up thanks... tbh if you dont write this down from the start, it leads to arguments later.

Proven by experience.