My HOT TAKE take on Product Design case studies

TL;DR: Stop making "UX Design case studies"
Why? Well you've got to watch the video for that.

Check out my other UX Design portfolio related videos

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FAQ ✨

Name: Alexa
Where I’m from: Wisconsin → San Francisco → San Diego
About: I’m a designer! I live, breath, and value design. My background is in Graphic Design and digital Product Design and I’ve worked at a number of tech startups as a Product Designer as well as for larger industry leading tech companies such as Yelp and Zendesk. I’m currently a Senior Product Designer at Zendesk on the growth and monetization team.

Myers-briggs: ENFJ
Education: BFA, Graphic Design

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[HeyYulia]

this is soooo helpful! I've started updating my portfolio and those case studies were blocking me because of the amount of text I'm supposed to write. nope, keeping it short and sweet now. thanks Alexa!

[chinaadesignagency]

This video had me cracking a lottt😂😂😂😂😂😂... Thanks for finally proving a point that has been sitting inside me for a while🤗🤗✨✨

[Anna-ncxd]

Hi Alexa, I really enjoy your channel. I am currently changing career into UX and have been really enjoying it so far. This month (June) I plan on dedicating a full time approach to my learning and portfolio development. This is the first thing in a long time that I’ve felt genuinely excited about so, it’s been great to find your channel, and it’s community! It’s also daunting to be making such a transition in my 30s but mostly I’m just super excited to stay positive that I will be successful in making this positive change, this year.

[rosa_odie]

I think you are absolutely right. My mentor is pushing me to avoid the "case study" method because it doesn't come across well. Instead, I am working to revamp my portfolio by telling a story and making it easy to follow for hiring managers and team leads. It took me a while to understand this because the case study made a lot of sense to me in terms of understanding my work. Thank you for breaking it down!!

[jazcap]

thank you for your awesome content! please keep making videos for those of us entering the UX world. I'm graduating from my school's first UX program next year and these videos are helping me way more than my classes have.

[gemmakelly]

Love this video! I'm currently working on a project to use in my portfolio for a trainee UX design scheme and this helps a lot! I've seen so many different examples online of case studies with a lot of in depth research and annotations, when realistically no one will spend that much time reading and will be looking at the design process instead :)

[JamieMPhoto]

This helps a lot! I have a hard time doing things that feel like semi-pointless busywork ... which is how some of these case studies seem to be. Also, I've never worked in an office that allows such introspection. Decision get made fast, and there's not a lot of time to ponder or especially to sit back and write stories about them. They seem much more useful for learning and for special cases. I feel like a hiring manager could get a lot more insight from a few quick interview questions.

[inikawadhwa]

It saved me a lot of time for my portfolio! My mind was stuck. Thank you.

[personalaccount]

It’s funny how UI & UX designers sometimes forget about their users(hiring managers and potential employers) when designing their own portfolio. Most hiring managers won’t spend more than five minutes on your site before moving on. It helped me to consider their viewpoint when designing my own website.

[yurikatatsumi]

I love this kind of content! Thank you very much for sharing! 🧡

[EmadElSammad]

Alexa, one time you said it’s nice to record a video, and that you always love to watch videos on the portfolio. How long should the video be? And how should it be done? Any example? I’m a filmmaker too so the idea of videos suit me perfectly. Thank you!

[rafaelschwenk]

Hi! Thanks for this video. I'm currently working on my portfolio and it really sucks that we want to show every tiny thing, but TL;DR. I was thinking about having a presentation to display my work, with the main stages of my process, and then create a piece on Medium to explain a little bit more. On the other hand, I'm so proud of some redesign I worked on but I couldn't change much the components, so I value more my research to achieve that result than the screens, cause I don't think they're WOW to show. These particular cases still bugs me how to present.

[hussamalsaeid]

In Dribbble & Behance, I see more of case studies that have large information from Ux processes, and I beginner so I start with fear.
But your talk Change my ideas for the best and clearest ❤

[KelvinChiuFilms]

Yes yes, this is exactly what I need. Thank you!

[wendynoboa]

Omg super useful! Thanks! I had also issues figuring out how to make a case study easy to get 🤔

[EmadElSammad]

I'm getting my UX/UI certificates through California's institute of Arts through online courses. Is it the same one you graduated from?

[desarrollos]

Hey! that is a great tip! Do you have any example of a good case of study for a portfolio?. Thanks!!

[ml-jefo]

So helpful knowing this . I’m working on my “case studies” rn and when writing I always tend to drag my thoughts out And try to be as insightful as possible but like you said when it comes to showing your design work, hiring managers just don’t have the time for a low- level overview. That’s why I’m currently looking for some more awesome mockups I can put my work in 🥳. Anyone got some? lmk haha 😂

[lily-ting]

So do you think the user testing iterations, personas, empathy, affinity maps, etc. are all necessary to show? Or just briefly mention them?

[sash-n-nyash]

The way the hiring is going I believe is that at the first screening, HR won't read your case studies, but they won't proceed with you if you have none. So you have to have at least one. At the second and third screening, someone probably will read your most recent (or the most clickbait looking) case study. So it is nice to have it written. And to be honest, if you ask me what I was doing in the previous project 2 years ago, I won't be able to tell you, because I don't remember. And your project type might vary, like mobile, or desktop, or web. So I encourage at least to write some of the process and decision-making thoughts in your portfolio as you go. And when it's time to present your "mobile application" work for your dream company you can refresh your memory about what an awesome job you did by reading your portfolio :)