Top 10 UX Case Studies Every Designer Should Read
Significant UX portfolios cannot be successful without well-done case studies. Recruiters use case studies to learn and evaluate the end-to-end process of how designers land on their final design solutions.
UX case studies are examples of design work that designers include in their portfolios. Via case studies, designers tell compelling stories in text and images to show how they handled problems. Such narratives showcase designers' skills and ways of thinking. Case studies are a great source of learning for the design community. Other designers learn from experiences when they read the case studies. It is also possible to apply a problem-solving approach from one problem to the other in some contexts. It is reasonable to say that reading UX case studies are essential for every designer to stay up-to-date with the design world.
Top 10 UX case studies
Here is a compilation of the top 10 UX case studies that every designer must read –
1. Helping homeowners understand their home value on Zillow
Zillow is the leading real estate and rentals marketplace for consumers in America. The company aims to empower people through data and insights to help them find a home they love. This case study focuses on the challenge of redesigning the comparable market analysis tool to be more user-friendly and help homeowners feel more confident about the market value of the home. The redesign's outcome was that homeowners who used the tool felt that they had more control in estimating their home value and had greater trust in the Zestimate (Zillow's automated home value estimate).
This case study by Frances Tung, Senior UX designer at Deloitte, integrates images in an incredibly readable way. There is just enough text to act as preambles to each step of the process. Once the reader reads the paragraph, she has an idea of what image will be presented next and how it ties into the overall design process.
2. Redesigning the New York Times app
This case study by Johny Vino is very well written and is extremely easy for anyone to understand. The case study is a goal-driven study that helped New York Times get through a crowded news app market and really stand out. The design team was challenged to retain the long-term loyalty of readers.
Instead of overhauling the existing New York Times app, the designers add a subtle and valuable feature to Timely's landing page. This enabled the user to receive notifications at opportune moments throughout a busy day: at breakfast, commute, before a meeting, during a coffee break, or right before bed. These notifications assisted the user in opening Timely and access articles. It takes a short time to read. Most importantly, the articles are catered to each user based on their interests and habits.
3. Yelp Activity Map
Yelp has always been about connecting people to great local businesses around the world. Despite this mission, there has never been an easy way to look back on these connections and places users experienced on Yelp. This project explores how one might be able to easily access a centralized place of their activity on Yelp and a look into what a visualization of one's geographical history could look like and mean to our users. Through a mix of user interviews, iterative prototyping, and concept testing, the designers' goal was to take a broad, conceptual idea and deliver something valuable to Yelp's power users.
The case study is so easy on the eyes, from the color scheme to the typography. Readers can do a quick 30-second scan and see that the author has defined product goals, talked about explorations, narrowed the selection, and then went in for the solution. There is also a video at the end, followed by learnings.
4. Fitbit
This UX case study talks about building a product for people who want to be fit and healthy but need some motivation (aka a kick in the butt) to go to the gym.
Per the author of the case study, "the general consumers of the multi-billion dollar worth of wearable fitness tracker market. Over the years, I have tried a few fitness trackers, and my current obsession is Fitbit. It's a great tracker and motivates me to be more active, but I have encountered a few problems while using their iOS app. So I decided to put my UX designer hat on and venture into the wild to see if anyone else shares my problems and if I could make any improvements to the app."
5. Managing Synced Accounts
Siftery Track is a B2B SaaS tool that helps companies make smarter decisions about their software stack through data imported from various financial accounts. As the remote Product Design Intern, the author of this case study worked with the lead product designer to improve the synced account page. The case study takes a design thinking-based approach to solve the problem.
6. Tito Taglish: designing a language learning app
User research indicated a strong desire for young Filipinx individuals who are not proficient in the Filipino language to learn Taglish, a combination of Tagalog and English commonly used in the Philippines. Although popular language learning apps like Duolingo exist, such platforms do not offer any Filipino language option. Given an enormous market gap, Tito Taglish designed and developed a responsive website and prototyped a mobile app that houses materials that encourage young FIlipinx individuals to learn Taglish.
7. Signal
Signal is a cryptocurrency trading platform that helps investors make the right trades by either copying other traders (copy-trading) or receiving trade suggestions based on technical and fundamental analysis (signals). Considered to be one of the most promising players in the market for its highly innovative value proposition, Zignaly had just raised funds and was willing to invest heavily in delivering the best possible experience to their users. The case study details how Zignaly discovered the right problem and came up with a meaningful solution.
8. UX Review forIncQueryLabs.com
This case study is unique because it focuses on a UX review rather than a product design. UX studio has conducted an expert review for the IT company IncQueryLabs to discover why their website did not perform well.IncQueryLabs builds software toolchains to boost industrial digitization efforts by helping their clients to achieve higher quality, faster time to market, reduce development costs, and break vendor lock-in. The UX expert review's main goal was to discover what causes poor conversion rates and what makes visitors leave the website.
9. Perfect Recipe -UX design for cooking and shopping
Perfect Recipe is a mobile application that enables users to search for food recipes and buy what they need to cook different dishes. This case study illustrates the entire UX design process is straightforward, plain language. Many aspects of the process are included, along with some really inspirational ideas, such as product personalization, challenges and solutions, animated interactions, and other interface details.
10. GnO Well Being
GnO Well Being is a creative illustration website that presents and sells a weighted designer blanket that helps you get a good night's sleep, the first step to good health and a better life. This example is so much more than a great UX case study. In addition to the UX design, it gives you insight into many more key design issues, such as the logo, custom graphics, website pages, interactions, etc. There are many ideas here that you could copy for your projects.
Conclusion
UX case studies are one of the essential parts of a UX designer's portfolio. Writing a well-structured UX case study is also one of the basic skills that a competent UX professional should have. So, UX case studies play a significant role in UX designer's life.
We hope our picks of the best UX design case studies, along with our step-by-step guide, will help you create a stunning UX case study.
