What are UX Case Studies?

UX case studies are examples of design work which designers include in their portfolio. To give recruiters vital insights, designers tell compelling stories in text and images to show how they handled problems. Such narratives showcase designers’ skills and ways of thinking and maximize their appeal as potential hires.

How to Build UX Case Studies

You want an active story with a beginning, middle and end – never a flat report. So, you’d write, e.g., “We found…”, not “It was found…”. You should anonymize information to protect your employer’s/client’s confidential data (by changing figures to percentages, removing unnecessary details, etc.).

Parts of report:

1. Exposition – the introduction (4–5 sentences). Describe your:
   1. **Problem statement–** Include your motivations and thoughts/feelings about the problem.
   2. Your solution – Outline your approach. Hint at the outcome by describing your deliverables/final output.
   3. Your role – Explain how your professional identity matched the project.

Stages 2–4 form the middle (more than 5 sentences). Summarize the process and highlight your decisions:

1. Rising action – Outline some obstacles/constraints (e.g., budget) to build conflict and explain your design process (e.g., design thinking). Describe how you used, e.g., qualitative research to progress to 1 or 2 key moments of climax.
2. Climax – Highlight this, your story’s apex, with an intriguing factor (e.g., unexpected challenges). Choose only the most important bits to tighten narrative and build intrigue.
3. Falling action – Show how you combined your user insights, ideas and decisions to guide your project’s final iterations. Explain how, e.g., usability testing helped you/your team shape the final product.

Stage 5 is the conclusion:

1. Resolution – (4–5 sentences). Showcase your end results as how your work achieved its business-oriented goal and what you learned. Refer to the motivations and problems you described earlier to bring your story to an impressive close.

Overall, you should:

• Tell a design story that progresses meaningfully and smoothly.
• Tighten/rearrange your account into a linear, straightforward narrative.
• Reinforce each “what” you introduce with a “how” and “why”.
• Support text with the most appropriate visuals (e.g., screenshots of the final product, wireframing, user personas, flowcharts, customer journey maps, Post-it notes from brainstorming). Use software (e.g., Canva, Illustrator) to customize good-looking visuals that help tell your story.
• Balance “I” with “we” to acknowledge team-members’ contributions and shared victories/setbacks.
• Make your case study scannable – E.g., Use headings as signposts.
• Remove anything that doesn’t help explain your thought process or advance the story.