HOW TO WRITE A COMPELLING

CASE STUDY

HOW TO WRITE A COMPELLING CASE STUDY J O E N AT O L I 1

 first and foremost…

FORGET WHAT YOU HEARD

One of the questions I’m asked most often is “how do I write a good case study?” And
while there are a million online articles, videos and courses answering that question, I’m
here to tell you that most of those answers are…well…WRONG.

Now — what do I mean by that? Surely my fellow high-profile UX colleagues know what
they’re talking about, right? Yes, they absolutely do, and I have deep respect for all of
them (even those I disagree with). But for whatever reason, they’re missing a few
absolutely critical components, and to be honest I don’t really understand why that is.

What I suspect is that they’re not stepping outside themselves and view the structure of a
case study from the point of view of a recruiter, hiring manger, or any other person
responsible for screening your portfolio. For the person who sees it before anyone with a
UX or Design background does.

This person’s entire job is to run interference, to shorten the number of portfolios the
people really doing the hiring need to see.

This point is important, so I’m going to hammer it: you're not just designing case studies
for someone who knows and understands what you do every day. You are also designing
it for this “screener” — a gatekeeper you have to get PAST in order to be considered for
an interview. A gatekeeper who, in most cases, knows little or nothing about UX or design
or the volume of strategic thought and work that happens when you try to improve a
product. Those gatekeepers include recruiters, hiring managers and HR personnel.

Most of those articles and videos and courses I’m picking on only address the reaction of
a UX- or design-savvy person making an interview decision. They assume that the person

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reading your case study will absolutely be interested in your thinking process, in all the
details of how you identified the right problems to solve and investigated possible
solutions and iterated to the final successful combination of form, features and
functionality.

Here’s the problem with that: this UX- or Design-savvy person is usually LAST in a
sequence of people who will see your portfolio. And in most cases, the one or two people
in front of him or her — the gatekeepers, the screeners — could give less than a shit about
the details of your story.

This book is a step-by-step recipe for overcoming that reality.

GIVE GOOD CASE STUDY!

HOW TO WRITE A COMPELLING CASE STUDY J O E N AT O L I 3

 PHOTO: ANN H.

one

GROUND RULES
Before we get to the step-by-step details of the structure and components of a good case
study, I’d like to give you some ground rules.

1. Title the project descriptively.

I want you to imagine that every single element on the screen can potentially cause the
viewer to stop reading, bail out and go do something else. That means you need to be
working overtime to make every single text element, every label and sentence, tell a
compelling story. In the case of your project title, you want it to mention the outcome or
problem at hand as well as what it was. Let’s look at a few examples.

Amazon Prime Music.

And…? What about it? What was wrong with it? What was it, app, desktop
site? Redesign? New feature? Don’t do this.

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 Amazon Prime Music App Redesign.
OK, better. But this is an established brand; why did it need to be
redesigned, to accomplish what?

Increasing Amazon Prime Music App signups by 150%.

Now you’ve got my attention. I know (1) who you did the work for, (2) that
you worked on a mobile app and (3) that your work got results. Alternatively,
if you had no outcome, you could say "Solving Amazon Prime Music’s
declining signup numbers."

2. Be conversational, not formal.

Be professional, but write as if you and I were having a conversation about this project. I
have always written just like I talk; to me, the goal isn’t perfect grammar or adherence to
rules — it’s clear communication. I want anything I write to be quick to read, easy-as-
possible to understand and sound like it could only have come from ME.

The minute your personality — your human-ness — goes out of your voice, people stop
reading. The recruiter, and especially the employer, wants to get a sense of who you are
as a person; if you’re overly formal or academic, that sense is lost. Obscured.

So when you write, read it out loud. If it doesn’t sound (or feel) like something you’d
ordinarily say, rewrite it until it does.

3. Write in short bursts, not long paragraphs.

And that means using LOTS of subheadings to break up critical points you make. Your
case studies should be scannable, meaning that anyone reading should literally be able
to scroll while reading your subheads only and get the gist of what the outcome was, what
you did and why you did it.

Treat those subheadings as if they'll be the only things anyone reads — because in most
cases, they will be.

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These are the critical selling points of the value of what you did. They’re used to explain
what’s in the text that follows, and they absolutely must be used every time you’re about
to explain something you need the viewer to remember about you.

My rule on scannability is this: there are only two people in this world who are going to
read everything you’ve written — you and your Mother. No one else has the time or
interest.

4. Give away the ending first.

Here’s the one that none of these “experts” ever advises, which absolutely shocks me.
Look, no one is going to read a word of what you’ve written unless they see what that
work actually accomplished. Or at the very least, if you don’t know what the outcome
was, what business problem you were trying to solve. Or what business opportunity you
were trying to enable.

Notice I said business.

While UX is certainly about users, you have to realize that serving user needs only matters
if doing so delivers some reciprocal value back to the business. The people looking at
your portfolio, in addition to wanting to see evidence of your UX or design skills, want to
see proof that you’re aware that you’ll be working for a business. A business who has
bottom-line needs related to making or saving money.

They’re thinking “what can this person help us achieve?” Or if this is an agency, they want
to know what you can help their clients achieve — which makes them look good. If you
think UX is only about users, I implore you to please think again.

So again, lead with the outcome. This does not and cannot come at the end of your case
study, like all those articles and courses and templates suggest — it needs to come first.

If I’m the recruiter or “screener,” you need to give me a damn good reason to spend
another 30 seconds here.

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5. Give away pieces of the case study — before you force
anyone to read it.

Remember what you know about progressive disclosure: we only want what we need
right now. We only need enough to take the very next action; we only need what we’ve
asked for. So information presented to a recruiter who isn’t interested in it — or didn’t ask
for it — is noise. It’s in their way, it’s distracting and it makes their job harder. 

As such, stage your case studies in two steps:

First, some bullet points under each project on your Case Studies page.
Before I’m going to read anything, I want to know three things:

1. What the outcome or problem you were trying to solve was,

2. What the project/product was, and

3. Who the client or business on the receiving end of that work was.

Finally, you want to add a clear hyperlink or button to read the full case study. I cannot
emphasize CLEAR enough here. Big, dominant, obvious, plain language. Here’s an
example.

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Next comes the actual case study itself. And before you dive into detail, include a
visually distinct summary paragraph at the very top, which is essentially a TL;DR (“too long,
didn’t read”). A single sentence, two at most, that explains what good thing you achieved
and what work was involved in doing so. Again, you do this so that if they ignore
everything else, you’ve made your case and given them the info that matters most —
while you still have their attention. Here’s an example:

P R OJ EC T SUM MA RY

I helped increase online enrollments by 160% by redesigning a signup sequence

for people wanting to manage their own mutual funds. The team and I did this by
simplifying language and labeling, reducing the number of steps and making the
interactive elements in the UI more obvious.

OK. Let’s tackle writing your case study, one piece at a time.

HOW TO WRITE A COMPELLING CASE STUDY J O E N AT O L I 8

 PHOTO: FREE CREATIVE STUFF

two

COMPONENTS OF A
COMPELLING CASE STUDY
OK, let’s cut to the chase; here are the components that belong in your case study.

1. Outcome (or Problem) statement.

What happened? What was the outcome of your work?

And if you don’t know the outcome, use a Problem Statement here instead: what was the
problem you were trying to solve for the client? And you answer that from their
perspective, not yours. It’s a given they need better UX for UI; everybody gets that, so no
one is interested in hearing about it. Instead, answer these questions:

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 • What business issue were they having that better UX
or UI would solve for them?

• What business opportunity would a new feature or

function or redesign give them?

Here are examples of outcome and problem statements:

O U TC O ME STAT E M E NT

A redesigned taxonomy and Information Architecture, along with interaction

design changes, reduced call center volume by 94% within two weeks after the
launch of our redesigned app.

P R OB LE M STATEM E NT

After its initial launch, the mobile banking app increased call center volume (and
internal costs) by over 30% in one day, which doubled by the end of the week.

These should be the very first thing(s) that recruiter or hiring manager or other reviewer
sees.

It’s the almighty WHY behind the work you did, it’s the reason that work happened at all.
And they need to see that you understand the importance of that why — and know how to
work strategically to achieve it or solve for it.

2. Users and needs.

Who were you designing for, and what did they need from you? What were their problems
you intended to solve? What outcomes did they need to have in order for the business

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issues at hand to be resolved? And as I suggested earlier, you start with a subhead:

Making online banking work for millennials

The subhead calls out who this was for ASAP, and we’re hinting at why the work was done
in the first place. That simple sentence tells us who the users were and what the problem
was — giving them an experience they’d actually be willing to use.

After the subhead, we elaborate:

Making online banking work for millennials

The bank’s target customers for the mobile app were Millennials, folks for whom
the smartphone is a permanent fixture of nearly every activity they undertake.

They consider traditional banking websites to be complicated and tedious, and

our research showed that they would drop a bank without hesitation solely based
on the ease of using its mobile banking app.

We also learned that a significant number of the traditional terms, labels and
language banks use everywhere in their digital products were almost completely
foreign to these users.

Clear, direct simple. Three short bursts of fact, with very little additional flourishes, big
words or anything else that gets in the way of the truth. No reason to belabor the point
with detail no one cares about.

3. Your role and the work you did.

What part did you play in the project? It’s particularly important to be clear about this, for a
couple reasons.

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First, it clarifies where your experience lies and confirms what you’re best at.

Next, it shows recruiters and employers that you have worked — and can work well —
with a team.

It demonstrates your ability and willingness to put your ego aside and collaborate. Nothing
is done in a vacuum alone, and if your case study is all about “me” or “I” instead of “we,"
that will often serve as a likely red flag. Recruiters and employers aren’t crazy about lone
wolf types; they want team players who can move their egos aside and work together with
people. So — time for another subhead:

My role in the project

Again, simple, clear direct. Says exactly what it is, makes it easy for that recruiter
wondering what you did to scan and land on it quickly. And then you explain:

My role in the project

As the Senior UX Designer, I collaborated with our Lead Software Engineer, Front-
End Developer and UI Designer to iterate on and test possible improvements to
reduce call center volume.

We each had specific responsibilities; my job upfront was to organize and design
usability testing sessions with users to figure out why they were abandoning the
app and calling for help.

4. Constraints, process and activities.

What boundaries were you working inside, e.g. time, budget, personnel? How did you
scope the project accordingly? This shows a recruiter or employer that you live and work

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in the real world, where not everything is by-the-book-perfect-world UX. It shows your
ability to flex and adapt and do the best you can with what you have.

From there, it's a matter of describing what you did. How did you proceed and iterate, how
did you integrate research, persona creation, design exploration, prototyping, etc. with
development efforts?

What roadblocks did you hit, and how did you overcome them?

That last one, in and of itself, can be really powerful. Every recruiter or employer knows
that nothing ever goes perfectly according to plan, so glossing over bumps in the road in
your case study will only cause them to mistrust your story.

Time for a subhead:

The mandate: 30% reduction in support calls — in just 3 weeks

Again, you’re giving the person browsing something to latch on to, some information that
says THIS IS WORTH READING.

Something that communicates that you had a real, measurable business goal, and you
were under pressure to deliver. You’re giving them clues they care about, reasons to
suggest you know what you’re doing, can deal with difficulty and — as such — may be a
good candidate for the job.

And then, of course, you tell the story. And you do so in a way that’s clear, direct and
which references the timeline and sequence in which the work took place. Keep in mind
as you write that you are telling a story — of which you’ve already given the ending. Or at
least stated what you were in pursuit of. As such, your story needs to indirectly keep
referencing back to the problem and the outcome (if known).

Here’s an example of how that might work:

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 The mandate: 30% reduction in support calls — in just 3 weeks
Our Product Owners were feeling a great deal of heat from executive leadership
to get these call center numbers down by at least 30% ASAP; the mandate they
gave us was that there had to be some measurable improvement in no more than
three weeks.

So we had to figure out what was wrong quickly, we had to be relatively correct
about both the cause and the fix, and we needed to implement something quickly.

Week One:

I spent half of the first week creating a user testing protocol that included a series
of research activities to perform, including Tobii eye-tracking. What I and one other
designer and developer observed during this usability testing was that users were
unable to find the desired report, stating that it was "buried." After six taps, they
gave up and called customer service for assistance.

Over the last two days of that same week, our UI Designer and I drafted 3 user
stories illustrating small, chunked improvements to navigation, interaction cues
and overall Information Architecture.

We presented these, along with our usability test results, to our Product Owner,
Lead Software Engineer, Front-End Developer and UI Designer. Working together,
we planned and prioritized low-fidelity prototyping of these stories in two 1-week
sprints.

Week Two:

Working side-by-side with our Development team utilizing twice-daily build

reviews, we used the first sprint to iterate on new global and local navigation
paths, along with simpler labeling and small changes to make interactive elements
such as hyperlinks and form elements more visually obvious.

The solution we implemented allowed the user to find all their reports within two
taps, only a third of what they were experiencing prior.

The sprint ended Thursday, a day early — and by the following Tuesday, the
customer call center volume had decreased by 40%. This was a welcome sign
that we were on the right track.

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 Week Three:

We spent the last week improving interaction flow and UI design. We removed
several chunks of marketing content from the report request screen, along with a
great deal of unnecessary instructional text. We also reorganized the sequence of
finding a report, necessitating some small changes to Information Architecture and
app structure.

Finally, we increased contrast and visual dominance of call-to-action buttons and

simplified their labeling. We committed and launched all changes that Friday.

By the following Thursday, only six days after the end of our second sprint, calls
had dropped by 74%.

Again, notice we didn’t belabor anything here; we didn’t waste time trying to be clever or
dive deep into the weeds that only another UXer, Designer, Developer or Engineer would
care about.

This isn’t an academic paper — it’s a SALES PITCH. So every word matters here; every
word is in service to one singular goal, which is to communicate that you’ve been there,
done that and delivered measurable results as proof of your ability.

And of course, any visual representation you can add to each section that helps tell your
story and support it is valuable as well. People will skip and scan across visuals, so make
them impactful, make them show more of what’s happening — so you can tell less.

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Clear workflows that illustrate a problem you found or an intended solution are great. So
are screenshots that illustrate a UI problem in that app or site you’re redesigning. Low-
fidelity wireframes demonstrating how you investigated ways to correct those issues. And
of course, the final product itself.

But again, a word of caution here:

As I am fond of saying, more is not better; it’s just more.

So if two wireframe images tell a compelling story, including another four will only serve to
dilute the impact of those two.

Every single piece of visual evidence you put in the case study has to be working in
service of telling the story.

And that term I just used, visual evidence, is how I want you to think of every image you
consider including.

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Think of those images as evidence in a courtroom trial:

• Does each one support and strengthen the case you’re making? If it’s
not strong evidence, or just eye candy, including it won’t gain you much.

• Is each image relevant to the point you’re making when you introduce
it? If an image isn’t being used to illustrate or clarify or strengthen
something you’ve said, it has no reason to be there.

• Is each image relevant to the work you did? While this is certainly about
working in a team, as I said, you still need to maintain focus on your skills,
your strengths. So whatever you’re showing should ideally be an artifact
that you either created or had a signifi ed ant role in creating.

• Does the collection of images tell the same story as your text, from
first to last? The arc of your story — from problem identifi cation to design/
UX exploration to solution implementation and beyond — should be
refl ected in the progression of images. Don’t be afraid to show your notes
and whiteboard scratches along with any software-generated artifacts
(wireframes, UI design, etc.)

Finally, in addition to static images, consider video as well. This could be a simple series
of static images with your voice narration over them. In fact, you can certainly provide a
video-based case study as well — but the clarity and strength of the relationship between
images and what you’re saying becomes exponentially more important.

Also, should you decide to do your entire case study as a video, provide a link to a text-
and-images version as well; never assume that all recruiters or hiring managers will want
(or be willing) to consume this content in the same way.

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 PHOTO: SUZY HAZELWOOD

three

TELL A COMPELLING STORY

So at this point I hope it’s clear how mission-critical-important it is that you tell a
compelling story — but I also hope it’s clear that this story has to be structured and written
in a way where your value to that potential employer is crystal clear.

In a way that assumes no one is going to read every word of what you’ve written.

In a way that respects the fact that recruiters, hiring managers and everyone in the
companies they both work for are time-poor.

Just like you, they have far too much to do and very little time to do it in.

So before I let you go, I’d like to ask you to do me a personal favor: please, please
PLEASE ignore all these novel-length case studies everyone gushes about all across
the Internet.

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Because while they’re damn impressive to all of us UXers and Designers, no one else has
the time or the inclination to read them.

The people who decide whether or not you get an interview are just too damn busy, and
they will never get past that all-too-clever headline or beautifully worded scene-setting
first paragraph.

Simple.

Clear.

Concise.

Value and relevance at every turn.

Now get writing!

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