My two cents on how to go about a UX Case Study!
Disclaimer: This is not a lesson or a class on writing Case Studies, this is just an observation on the Journey into the creation of a case study! It may work for some, others may find it stupid. Like the disclaimers in movies say - Viewer discretion is strongly advised, take this article with a pinch of salt :P
Let's face it! 7/10 designers out there dread writing or updating their case studies or even their portfolios. But it is one of the best ways to sell yourself and highlight your experience to the world.
Let me begin by saying this - every UX Case Study you write or come up with need not be perfect. Just go with the flow for the initial first set of drafts, then slowly start improving on it until you arrive at a decent Case study.
Treat the case study like a short story or a movie script or as simple as a small article you write on a blog or even on Twitter. Do not think big from the get-go, rather think about the start, the middle and the end of your case study, then slowly work your way into the finer details.
When you treat your case study like a story, you can connect better with people and their emotional responses when stories have a good start, middle and end.
The start - What problems did you solve, what were your challenges and who were your end users would be a good way to start a case study. You can even plug in your User Persona.
The middle - Talk about the research you did, the solutions you found, the impact of the solutions and the ideation, implementation and process behind your design!
The end - The best way to finish is quite obvious - it should cover the task flow, some of your initial wireframes, and final coloured prototypes, you can even throw in learnings as well to round it off. You need not add every screen you designed over here, just a handful of them that have importance would do.
Now that you have a structure, work your way into the finer details like adding in findings, and usability testing, you can even add a detailed competitor analysis of the features you liked in your competitors and how you used those features and made them your own. Heads up, add competitor analysis only to those case studies of apps you made in your leisure or the ones you did as an exercise to improve your skills.
While experts may say there is a particular structure one must religiously follow for every Case Study, it need not be the case every single time. If you have a good start, middle and the end, work your way up and customize your case studies as you wish to. EOD it is your case study, so follow your heart!
All your case study needs to do is give your colleagues, followers, recruiters, friends etc., a glimpse of the way you think, ideate and solve problems!