“The way you think” — 7 steps for a good UX case study.
For my fellow designers, if you are trying to apply for a new job in your vacation or weekends, consider these in your portfolio case studies. As a hiring manager, it is a game changer.
First of all, you need to understand that design teams care about how you really think more than the output itself. It doesn’t really matter the output UI design you got, it is more critical the way you reached that solution and what assumptions that you listed to get to it.
Second thing is that you need to consider as a designer, you are a problem solver at the first place, you can’t just do a UI design to show off your skills, you need to be solving a problem, that’s why we consider the case study is the story of your thinking to solve that problem. Consider this always in your daily job routine as well.
Third, the case study can be something you did while you are in a full-time job team or as a freelancer or pro bono or even you found an app that you considered having a better solution for it. All of these works as a perfect example for a case study that shows your potential.
Since 7 is the number of completion, I consider listing 7 touch points to make up your UX case study. Here you go as following:
Problem statement. You are a problem solver, therefore there is a problem, hence you need to define it. Sometimes the problem is clear enough for you, and other times it is not. As a UX designer you have to figure it out and write it down. Simple questions that you should answers are like; why we are doing this, what will happen if we didn’t do this, why is this a problem at the first place, etc.
Your target audience. You definitely need to tell us for whom you are designing the solution, because a problem for someone might not be actually a problem for someone else. Impact: Defining a persona and user behaviour of the target audience makes your case study solid and very specific.
Tell us more about your findings and insights. Show what are the trigers of the problem, what did people say about the this problem, what numbers that you saw that indicates that this is a problem, what market research did you do to reach that problem. Impact: This will make the case study more solid and you are not doing a random checks.
References. Any problem or any solution idea, most probably someone out there have thought about it and made it happen, so go and search for those references and how did they solve this problem, and most important ask yourself why they do have that problem at the first place. You can literally include their case studies in yours and give credits to them. Who ever is reading your case study will mostly trust your output because it is based on facts and lots of hard work research. Impact: Adding other designers solutions as a reference is actually strengthen yours not weaken them, a lot of designers are mistaken about that and feel egoistic about it, however it is the total opposite.
Possible solutions. You read it right, “possible” solution, not the only one solutions. So in this part you list down all your solution sketches and possible screens or flows for that problem. You can simple do some iterations with the “Crazy 8s sketches” technique by Google. It is super useful and to the point. Impact: By this way you are telling the reader that you have brainstormed and searched a lot to get the best solution for your users.
Prototyping. At this stage you will nominate one solution screen or flow and present its high fidelity version. The prototype can be static screenshots, interactive prototype or a quality video. Depending on your level of excitement do the effort. I believe you can do anything as a designer, the only challenge is the time, I can export a screenshot in a minute or I can learn simple After Effects to animate a prototype in couple of hours or I can spend a day writing interactive frontend code for it. Just go with your creative flow. Impact: Definitely this is the result that I would like to see after the efforts you did.
Impact of this solution. So here comes the final part of the case study, what is the impact of your solution on the product’s problem. At this stage you need to show the new feedback on your solution, the new numbers and the new turn over. You need to consider that it should not be huge, but a slight step of an impact towards a better product is enough. Run a survey after for your new prototype, ask product managers for the new numbers or even go to any of your friends and ask them, of course they should fall in the persona criteria, no negotiations in that. Show me your results your own way, the more impact you do the solid your solution is.
Conclusion. Your case study is a story that you are telling, it is the logic behind why we are doing what we are doing, it is the logic of why we build products at the first place. If you didn’t show this, I will probably consider you doing a UI revamp only, and believe me, most of the Dribbble shot that I usually see are not usable at all and don’t solve a problem, it is like bragging of skills of an empty mind.
Wish you all best of luck and feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.