4 Tips for Structuring Design Case Studies
Your guide to creating a 🔥 design portfolio
Let’s admit it — building a design portfolio is tough!
The design field is a constantly moving target, which means creating an effective portfolio requires understanding the needs of today’s job market. The challenge is figuring out how to frame your work around these needs, and communicating the value that you bring uniquely as a designer.
For a while, my portfolio suffered because I didn’t understand this basic framework. It looked great on the surface, but it wasn’t effectively communicating my ability to solve problems and to think through design challenges.
After speaking with designers from places like IDEO and Facebook, design managers and recruiters in the field, I’ve been able to extract some major themes to help you structure your design portfolio case studies.
Once you have 3–5 case studies to showcase on your site (make sure two of them are REALLY good), the following tips should help you communicate your projects with clarity and structure.
I hope you’ll find something useful to help you build your portfolio!
1. Problem — Solution — Approach
Let’s talk overall structure. Each case study should tell a compelling story of how you took on a design challenge. How did you solved a problem for your customers, business or organization? I find the following structure helps me communicate my project narrative in a way that’s clear and easy to follow:
1. Problem
A short elevator pitch is a great way to give context to your project. Follow this up with a concise problem statement where you describe the design challenge and why the problem is an important one to solve.
2. Your Role
Be clear about your role in the project. Briefly mention your contributions and list some of the resources that you had to work with (e.g., timeline, team, funding).
3. Solution
This is arguably the most important section in your case study. Determine the best way to showcase your design — and don’t be afraid to be bold! For example, with an interaction design piece, I might consider including a video prototype, a series of screens or an interaction flow.
Most importantly, describe the impact of your design. Metrics and testimonials are a great way to communicate the impact you had on business, customers or organizational initiatives.
4. Approach
This is where you dive into your process. The challenge is communicating clearly and logically how you reached your solution. What were the key events, insights, and decisions that influenced your final design? You don’t need to (and shouldn’t) talk about everything you did in a project, but DO include relevant successes, failures and iterations.
Don’t worry about retrofitting your approach into a template process — each project will call for a different approach. Your goal is to explain how you tackled that particular problem based on your knowledge of design and the processes available to you.
5. Learnings
It never hurts to include a final section in which you reflect on what went well, what you would’ve done differently, and any feedback you received throughout the project.
2. Make it scannable
Let’s be honest, very few people are going to read your case studies word-for-word. You’ll need to make each one easy to scan. When someone glances over your case study, they should be able to understand at a high level the problem, solution and approach you took.
You can achieve this by carefully balancing text and visuals, providing clear section headings, and bolding important keywords. Be creative!
3. Show intentional design
I see intentionality on two different levels: the big why and the little why’s. First, you want to make it very clear why you are solving this problem. Second, you want to communicate with clarity and intentionality the series of smaller decisions you made along the way.
This will require a bit of reflection, but it will also challenge you to become a more thoughtful designer.
4. Show self-awareness
Take opportunities throughout your portfolio to showcase your strengths, whether it’s interaction design, visual design, research, strategic thinking, etc. Show that you know what your strengths are, or where you want to improve.
Similarly, you can find opportunities throughout your portfolio to share your values and beliefs as a designer. I say, do what feels comfortable for you!
Conclusion
Lastly, make sure your portfolio is structured to emphasize your work — keep it clean and easy to navigate.
You’ll find that the process of building your case studies will force you to reflect on the decisions made within each project and your individual contribution. It’s a great way to cultivate self-awareness as a designer and to distill thoughtful lessons that you can bring to your next project.
Now you’re ready to create case studies that communicate your projects clearly and effectively.
You’ve got this!
