Context
What; an article that illustrates how we solve a business problem for one of our clients.
Why; creating interest from potential customers and recruits (and maybe audience).
How;
- Demonstrating our understanding of the business problem
- Demonstrating our capabilities (strategy, tech, design, marketing…)
- Demonstrating our expertise (New Retail, WeChat, FMCG…)
Where; our case studies are blog posts with a pre-defined format (see below) and a special tag. This allows us to push our case studies on the blog and prevents us from being stuck with a rigid format (which may not fit all projects). We still display case studies separately in some places (e.g. home page or work section).
Format
Our format follows the storytelling arc;
- Context; we set the context for the business problem, explaining who the client is.
- Problem; what pain point they hit and why. What the challenges are…
- Development(action to resolution); where we describe how we went on to solve the problem and what the solution is. Potentially, starting by the solution, and then diving into the specifics (design, tech used…). These specifics are secondary. The main focus should be on business goals/solutions/challenges/
- Return to normalcy; explaining how the new situation is opening up new horizons, what the next steps are or providing some amount of perspective (link to other projects or larger discussion).
Dependencies
- Photos; better to be taken through the project, but worst case scenario can be reconstructed. They can be taken with a phone as they won’t be displayed in HD in most cases.
- Assets; screenshots of the final product, final pro pictures of the product in use, videos…
- Key numbers; a series of impressive/relevant metrics or facts (e.g. 100k users within 2 days or 5 weeks to pilot).
- Technologies; list of tech we used
- Testimonial; from a client. Be sure to write it for them and submit for their edits/approval.
- Notes; from the leaders of the project. This needs to be done through questions face to face with these individuals. Questions to ask:
- Learnings
- What was hard, what was easy
- What was good or bad
- What would you change if you could
- What was the overall methodology
- What tools did you use
- …
How to get it done?
- A good first milestone is to write the summarized case study. Moreover, if this is ready, we can integrate it in the sales deck.
- Identify who are the leaders on the project.
- Write the context (potentially talk to BD/sales to make sure it’s ok).
- Gather assets (from the design team mostly).
- Once you understand roughly the final product, sit down for 5 to 10 minutes with the project leaders (individually) and run them through question to fill in your arc (the development part).
- Once you have a draft, bring in senior staff to help you finalize the first version and provide the last part (esp. perspective bits).
Don’t overdo it, our case studies can be VERY simple.