Five Tips to Build UX Case Studies That Set You Apart in a Job Interview

Last year during some of the hardest moments in the tech job market, I found myself, suddenly, without a job. A month later, I signed a job offer as lead product designer with the first company I interviewed at.

When I lost my job, I didn’t have a portfolio and was thrown into an oversaturated talent pool where all of us competed for a few open jobs left on the market. I knew that my case studies must be a differentiator in helping me land my next job.

In lieu of a portfolio, I opted to spend my time building case studies for the inevitable step in a product design interview called the Portfolio Review. Arguably one of the most important parts of a product design interview, it is typically 60 minutes in length and spans two case studies — tediously long but also short for what it’s meant to do. Hiring designers on the panel are looking for signals that someone is the right fit for the job. It could very well be you, but to show it within 60 minutes requires care and thoughtful strategizing.

This isn’t a step-by-step guide on how to structure your case studies — the internet is already filled with solid and dependable resources on that.

This is, however, a guide to elevate your case studies so that they set you apart from other designers vying for the job.

1. Pick case studies that show that you are the right fit

Ah, I could write a whole article just on this one. By the right case studies, I don’t even mean the obvious things — like relevant work in a similar field. I mean to do your research on the company you’ve applied to, look at the company’s values, culture, and their product-development cycle, and ask yourself these questions:

• Do they move fast and break things?
• Have you moved fast and broken things?
• Do they follow every customer’s whims and make quick assumptions or do they have extensive release cycles and careful rollout plans?
• Where in your experience as a product designer have you worked in similar manners?

Once you have aligned your experience with the company’s standard way of operation, inject that into your case studies skillfully. Show your interviewers that your experience and where their company is currently at is a match made in heaven.

2. Lead with strong whys

I’ve found that the first few moments (or slides!) are critical in getting your audience on board for the rest of the ride. To command their attention, the problem statement for your opening case study must be sound.

Look — the CEO wanting you to work on something might be a compelling reason at your old job but it may not suffice in a job interview. After all, as designers, we know that design mustn’t be frivolous, and the very best of us are hired to make sure we solve the right problems.

A mature designer digs deeper.

Digging deeper often means that for every problem you undertake, it ladders up to both the company’s short and long-term business objectives. Show how it does by projecting an impact to its bottom line. A nice bonus if you can tie it back to the company’s overall vision.

3. Use the subject matter to illustrate your design process

Boring case studies give more weight to the design process rather than the subject matter itself. Most designers have the process down to death, and hiring managers have already made this assumption when hiring at mid-level and above. They don’t need to know that you know about the double diamond, crazy eights, card-sorting exercises, etc.

I’m not saying to discard your process, but here’s what I would recommend: Use the methods you applied in your work to create a single thread of thought that help you illustrate how you made a really complex thing simple.

Help the interviewers understand the problem space, through your process.

4. Use the Rule of Three

The Rule of Three is a principle that states that people tend to remember and respond better to information that is presented in groups of threes.

As designers, we already understand that not loading our users cognitively is an important goal. Using the Rule of Three during a presentation helps us achieve this goal. It is also a simple way to move your thread of thought forward, connecting every crucial moment to the next step in your design process. Hey, storytelling!

Use this rule by choosing pauses at critical points where three key takeaways (or criteria or principles — you get the idea) sets you up for the next phase in the case study.

5. Simplify. Really simplify.

It takes time to design. Our jobs often involve automating tedious workflows in niche spaces. After a while, you become a sorta-expert in the space and your brain does this funny thing where you start assuming that everyone else in the world knows the weird acronyms you do.

Well, they don’t.

In a portfolio presentation, one of our key jobs is to not confuse our interviewers. Simplify every word; simplify everything. Run it by your peers, preferably people who understand design but do not understand the subject matter.

And in the spirit of simplifying, resist the urge to include every project phase in the company’s year-long endeavor to scale a small complex thing into a big complex thing. I know it hurts because you worked on it all, and you want to impress, but trust me — it is better to simplify.

To recap, five tips to elevate your UX case studies:

1. Pick the right case studies
2. Lead with strong whys
3. Use the subject matter to illustrate your process
4. Use the Rule of Three
5. Simplify

A UX case study follows a generic flow, and can seem quite standard and boring, but if you do it right, it can help you impress your interviewers and secure your place in their minds as a great candidate.

Good luck.