Importance of Case Studies

Getting deeper into building my professional portfolio, I have learned about how important it is to write case studies for your work. It’s one of the aspects of showcasing your work I wish I knew about years ago. It’s never smart to dwell in the past, so I’m grateful to implement the new wisdom now more than ever. 

“Aside from showing your experience and skill, case studies give your potential client or employer an idea of how you work and think.”

-Tobias van Schneider

Case studies are essentially the essential body copy to explain and express how you started from scratch and resulted in the final product of your designs. Without the case study, you would only be left with images with no context. Viewers can’t read your mind nor understand what an image may represent. With anything you do, it’s best to research the subject. I was grateful to be recommended an article by self-taught designer and maker, Tobias van Schneider, titled, How to Write Product Case Studies for Your Portfolio. He acknowledges that writing case studies may be the most dreaded part of putting all your work together, but it is also crucial and necessary. 

Tobias gives the reader many useful tips that I will run through and discuss how they will personally help me pull my work together. The starting tip is to write down your case studies before you do anything else. This first bullet point of advice is already a curveball for me since I tend to bounce around from project to project as a student with 6 courses and various types of assignments. Typically, I would want to dive right into building the site, but this semester I had to stay consistent and devoted to writing these case studies. He claims it’s not as fun (which is true) but you can hit a wall and rush the information resulting in not your best potential. Very important to have a good representation of you. 

The second plan of action is to keep it brief and caption everything. Viewers tend to scan your work to get the general idea so it’s best to keep it short and sweet. That is another thing I struggle to manage since I want to explain each detail. I have chunked down my text and I believe it will be better than having essays for case studies. Tobias also tells us to Include the right details. This is vital since you never wanna ramble on the wrong thing nor leave out ideal details. The writer should add the name of the client and their background, goal for the project, your experience, and the outcome. I did take all of these into consideration when writing mine, and I’m glad I had this advice up my sleeve.

The next tip is to write in your own voice which Tobias reveals not to use acronyms or text language since some readers won’t know what you mean nor is it professional. On the flip side of that statement, you don’t want to write with vocabulary that’s too far out of reach. You don’t want to use words that you don’t use regularly especially if you don’t fully understand what it means. Alongside that you don’t want to image dump where there are too many photos and not enough text. Captions are great, but leaving it at that is not enough. The pictures can’t speak for themselves. 

Lastly, Tobias suggests to think of each case study as a magazine feature. The portfolio as a whole should be cohesive. It’s impressive to see each of them match, yet different and creative. I like this similarity since it helps me have a creative perspective to compare them to each other.

Source:

https://vanschneider.medium.com/how-to-write-project-case-studies-for-your-portfolio-2e8d397a60b4