YOUR FIRST UX CASE STUDY / LESSON 5 OF 6
Turn your decisions into a readable case study.
Write a focused narrative around your contribution, evidence, alternatives, and limitations rather than presenting a gallery of process artifacts.
Write the opening after you know the project
Start with the task, project status, your contribution, and the scope you actually explored. For Neighbourhood Classes, say that this is a fictional community-class booking concept, not client work or a launched service. Describe the artifact you reached, such as a prototype and a revised flow, without promising improved bookings. Readers should not have to infer whether research occurred. State the method accurately or explain that the project remained assumption-led. This opening creates the boundary for everything that follows.
Choose decisions instead of reproducing every stage
Select two or three decisions that make the project understandable. A useful sequence is the uncertainty, the information available, the alternatives, the choice, and the remaining limitation. Include only artifacts that help explain that sequence. You do not need an empathy map, persona, or workshop photograph merely to resemble a standard process. If you changed direction, explain the trigger honestly. A design judgment can be worth discussing even when it was not prompted by user research, provided you label its source.
Write captions that make an artifact useful
Show the relevant portion of a screen at a readable size and explain what the reader should notice. A before-and-after pair needs a reason for the change, not just arrows and different colours. Keep visual output separate from demonstrated effect. Include a text explanation for diagrams so meaning does not depend entirely on an image.
Keep ownership and evidence visible
Check every statement against your ledger. Identify your work, acknowledge collaborators, and describe borrowed tools or templates without claiming you created them. Use real observations only when the method and sharing permission support disclosure. Do not reconstruct quotations from memory or turn a few comments into a general claim about all users. Remove identifying details and any sensitive screenshots; a pseudonym does not automatically make a story anonymous. When evidence cannot safely be published, describe the permitted process or leave that material out.
End with the current state and the next check
Close with what exists now, what you learned about your decisions, and what remains uncertain. For an unlaunched concept, the outcome can be a documented design direction rather than business impact. Name a specific next check, such as whether people understand the unavailable-session recovery path without help. Do not imply that a planned study has already happened. Use the workbook as a writing scaffold, then remove prompts that do not fit. A concise, bounded story is more useful than a complete-looking process assembled from unsupported claims.
YOUR TURN / A SMALL, CONCRETE NEXT STEP
Draft a case study around two decisions
- Write an opening that states project status, task, scope, and your contribution.
- Explain two decisions using the available evidence, an alternative, and a remaining uncertainty.
- Add three readable artifacts with descriptive captions and text alternatives where needed.
- Finish with the actual current outcome and one proposed check; audit every claim against your ledger.
Your deliverable: A first case-study draft with two decision narratives, labelled evidence, three captions, and a specific next-step proposal.
A personal checklist, not an assessment. Mark it when you’re ready.