💻Case Study Creation for Teammates
Video Version
Here's a video version:
Telling the Story of Your Experience
Teammates involved in project training, volunteer work, and class training should tell the story of their experience through case studies. Everyone tells the same kind of case study: the story of the problems, the decisions made as a team, and the outcomes of progress made as a team.
Great Case Studies Have The Following
A Story Arc
Everyone loves a great story. There are different ways to tell it, but it should start with some kind of problem and show how it progressed. Try to avoid describing “multiple events” like if you were describing how it all happened. Take the readers there. Envelop them into the story itself, relive the story through the case study with them. There are way to structure a story called “Arcs”, and this template focuses on the arc that depicts three parts: problem, journey, progress.
Measurable Concrete Outcomes
You may have heard the phrase “Do the work with the end in mind”. While visuals can be key to showing how the work happened, it’s not enough to add a lot of pictures of your interface designs or produced results. Showing how you measured success, or how you would measure success, is the most important part of showing the work. You can do this in a lot of ways. If you were not in the position to actually measure change, you should show how you would measure change so that readers can see your thought process. Doing this will highlight the potential impact of your decisions as a team.
A Focus on the Why
Focusing on the reasoning and “why” behind your design decisions in a UX case study is crucial because it reveals your problem-solving mindset and critical thinking skills. Employers and stakeholders aren't just interested in what you designed. They want to understand the logic, research, and trade-offs that guided each choice. By articulating the “why,” you demonstrate that your design isn’t arbitrary or based on trends, but grounded in user needs, business goals, and usability principles. This level of insight differentiates you from others who simply showcase visuals, highlighting your ability to think strategically and collaborate effectively within cross-functional teams.
User Audience Perspectives
This will ground your work in real human needs and context. UX is not a creative field. UX is an applied science field. We follow the scientific method to test hypotheses. Our product decisions are hypotheses, and we need to show how we tested them. We need to show the data that helped us form the hypotheses. All adjacent roles should follow this structure too. Product owners, business analysts, product designers, UX designers, UX researchers: you also need to showcase user perspective about the problems you are solving. Whatever title you are after, your case study should tell the story about the current state, and how you strategized to make the current state different.
Conflict to Resolve
The conflict you resolve could be the user pain points, conflict within the team, or both. Your audiences don’t want to see that you did this work alone. They want to see how your team pulled together to tackle the conflict. They want to see how you progressed through adversity and changing winds. This is an understated strength of teamwork when people face conflict and resolve it to grow together. Discuss in your case study how you grew through the conflict, and how your team and outcomes grew through the conflict.
Collaboration that's Cross-Functional
UX and product work often happens in a team, and sometimes teams isolate themselves based on a department. Employers value designers who can collaborate effectively and contribute to a shared vision, not just produce individual work in a vacuum. Employers who run agile teams want to see your cross-functional collaboration skills meaning how you worked together as a unified team across all kinds of work functions to accomplish an outcome. This is easier said than done. It relies on you to understand the overarching project plan and the work that others did. It relies on you as a teammate getting involved in other work functions so you can tell the story of the context. Showcasing how you worked within a team highlights your communication skills, adaptability, and ability to integrate diverse perspectives into your design process.
Case Study Outcomes
Your case study should:
Help readers make informed decisions about your ability to work with others
Showcase your collaboration and team skills
Showcase your approach to problem-solving
Showcase the ways you think
Showcase your ability to take a lot of information and condense it
Case Study Creation Training Template
Here's a template that provides a way for you to build the components of a story-driven case study that's based on the problem-solving outcomes and measuring success:
Last updated