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How to create stronger case studies

Step off of the design portfolio assembly line with some critical thinking.

Amy Rogers
UX Collective
10 min readMar 25, 2021

Decorative. A group of robots, but one is much more prominent and confident-looking than the others.

The way designers build their case studies is broken. If you’re a design school or bootcamp graduate, odds are that your portfolio will look the same as everyone else’s. It’s not your fault, it’s a product of the system. Following case study templates doesn’t require critical thinking, but it’s what you’re taught to do, right?

And if we’re being completely honest with ourselves, the things case studies focus on aren’t impressive. If you’re selling yourself as a designer I’m going to assume you can make something as simple as wireframes.

As someone who’s previously hired a designer, I can tell you that once you’ve seen dozens of case studies, you’ve seen them all. It’s no longer enough to show your outcomes, you need to share the story of how you got there.

The importance of a narrative

In Simon Sinek’s talk Start With Why, he explains that the most successful companies focus their messaging on their mission rather than the benefits of their product. “People don’t by what you do they buy WHY you do it”. The same is true for selling yourself.

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Published in UX Collective

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Responses (4)

What are your thoughts?

on my website.

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Calling back to what I said earlier, a good storyteller focuses on their purpose rather than their outputs.

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a good storyteller focuses on their purpose rather than their outputs

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