10 Steps for attractive case study - For Designers - Ep 254

How should we write a case study? What are all the methods to do it? How to make it very attractive? What could be the length of my case study when I have to start documenting a case study? Before the project, after the project, in between the project. Lot of questions people have, right? In this podcast I'm going to tell you why it is important to understand this basic element of creating a case study and how to make it and nail it in interviews and portfolio. Okay, let's jump in. Welcome guys. Welcome to this particular Design for Change podcast today. Very interesting topic we have which is how to make a creative and attractive case study. In fact, a lot of the design community and designers and freshers and everybody asks this question. But let me break it very clearly for you, okay? So first of all I'm going to give you a ten step plan how you can create a case study. How to make it even more attractive. See, attractive in the sense not only visually, you should also be taking you to the next level, right? For that certain basic things you need to understand. First, bring out what is your title and subtitle for your proper case study.

Okay.

It should be definitely small, concise. If not, it should grab somebody's attention. Like let's say 90% of the people are dying in road accidents. When it comes to hilly regions in Ooty, my problem is to solve it. See how the heading is? So the heading is very, very important. Second is you need to have some little summary. Make sure your summary is very brief and also it provides you what is the key problems you're attending, what are the important statistics you're having, what would be the possible outcome you'll be getting? Okay, it should be very, very quick to understand, guys, I'm building a solution in order to reduce the road accidents by 90 percentage, by even 50 percentage in the hilly regions where people are crowded a lot. Where, where people are crowded less. But the, but the sandstorms and the what you call the stonefall and other landslides could possibly happen. Where I'm building a system where it can stop. Maybe you could build an alternate road. Maybe you could build a barriers, maybe you could build anything. But the point is you need to write some summary about it, what it is. Okay, and what are the introduction like? Let's say write what is the particular project about? Maybe the client project or your one personal project or the background information of the project. Maybe you can collect some information about that and put it. Okay, this gives them an introduction and then write a problem statement. Okay, you can go back to One of my podcasts and listen how to define a problem statement clearly. Okay, the problem statement should tell what kind of a problem you're addressing, whom you're addressing, how you're addressing and what are the possible ways you're going to show them and who is your ideal Persona and when are you going to solve it and what are the impact before and after. When you are very clearly specifically telling the goal and objective that becomes a problem statement. Okay, so let me recollect what I said. Write a proper title and summary subtitle Executive Summary. Make sure it's very having a good summary and introduce your project first what it is. Define your problem statement clearly and then go for the approach and method. See again, this is not the only way to do it guys. You can do it any way upside down also no problem. I teach my students in upside way down. I ask them to build a portfolio and then add details. That's different but this is the ideal way in which everybody can understand is what the reason I recorded this podcast. Okay, so in the fifth step you can write about method. What is the design process you applied? Have you applied iterative process? Have you applied conversion divergent thinking? Have you applied double diamond process? Have you applied any kind of a method? Make sure you write about that process tools, technique, framework and do it. Sixth is show some implementation plan how was your solution implemented and highlight the key stages and milestone and time plan for it. This is very, very important. Any project or a case study which doesn't have an implementation, it doesn't look like a case study at all.

Okay.

Seventh is results and outcomes. Make sure you're showing what is the results. I already told you, right? You have to show before and after after your project implementation happened how much road accidents have come down. Can you quantify that? Can you make a qualitative results out of it? Make some graphs, make some numbers, project some visuals, show some illustrations, art testimonies or stories which can able to project it. This is how the project case study will become more interesting. Guys, the moment if you bring testimonies, the moment if you bring results. The moment if you bring testing with the people and real time data or the video or the audio in front of the project in your portfolio, people will separately respect you because they know that you did it authentically and they know you are capable of doing it in their organization as well. That's how people get to connect with you fast. 8 is conclude this project properly and give a future steps how the project will be taken in the long term. What are the next steps? Give that. Ninth is put everything in your project with huge visuals and less text. Always remember this. 8020 rule 8080 percentage pictures and visuals. 20 percentage text infographics. You can use flowcharts. You can use diagrams. You can use user flows. You can use empathy mappings. You can use. So all these things could be possibly there. And make sure your renders are high quality.

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Very important. You can use Canva. You can use Miro also. Maybe you can use figjam also. These are all the good softwares we can able to put your visuals and create these things.

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10Th most important thing. Call to action. Make sure you give a call to action. Contact me for further details. Connect with me to know about more about this project. Write an email to me about a query. If you are interested, call me this number for collaboration. So if you're not giving call to action. Whatever the case study you're building is not going to have a big impact. So first is title and subtitle. Second is summary. Third is introduction. Fourth is problem statement. Fifth is approach and methodology and framework. Six is implementation plan. Seventh is results and outcomes. Eighth is conclusion and further steps. Ninth is visuals. Tenth is call to action. What mistakes people do in front of all this information? What I'm giving you, they put overly technical terminology. Let us put empathy mapping. Let us put iterative design process. Let us put. When people see templated portfolio guys formula based portfolio they call one of the person like Anudeep also he calls this formula based portfolio. He's one of the interesting person. He teaches UX and all the stuff he talks about formula based. I tell them like templated portfolio because I talked with a lot of recruiters they say templated portfolio. Templated portfolio. People reject in one minute if they say templated portfolio. So remember when you're building a case study, you should never have some kind of a technical terminology. Make sure it is written in a story. Make sure it is like as if you are writing it. Ideally speaking you are writing it. Do not use ChatGPT here. Collect information from ChatGPT but do not copy paste here.

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Remove all the irrelevant details. Make sure you don't put anything which is like people are now happy. People are now safe. Make sure what way it is safe before it is like this. After it has reduced by 50 percentage after it has increased by 3 times now people are happy. See the moment. If you bring metrics only it will look interesting. Don't put any negative impact on the clients or something like only focus on positive aspects. Make sure your case study has at least five to ten pages.

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Then if that case study is there with five to 10 pages only, it will have some interesting element to look at it. Okay, don't make it just one page or don't make it only two pages. That's not the way. The best way to write a case study is start writing from the start of the project. Because your memory is very low, sometimes if you're documenting something, you will not be able to do it properly over the time.

Okay?

Make sure you're writing it from the start of the project. That's the ideal way to do and end it parallelly along your case study.

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So make sure you write it in a form of stories, add visuals, add important highlighting points, make sure it is illustrative and also show data and alerting facts and alarming information. The moment when you show this, your case study becomes more interesting. Guys, I hope this podcast is really useful for you. Retrieve it one more time and listen to it. Because this way if you structure your case study or a project, it becomes super attractive. And make sure you give call to action.

Okay?

Whether you build website, behance, PDF, portfolio, anything, it doesn't matter. Even if you make word file, doesn't matter. Make sure you give a call to action, then only people will connect with you.

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Take care. All the best. We'll see in another episode.