case-study-writing

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SKILL.md (first lines)

# Case Study Writing

## Structure

### The Honest Arc
1. **Context** — Company, timeline, your role, team size. No fluff. Just facts.
2. **Problem** — What was broken, missing, or failing. Be specific with metrics if you have them.
3. **Constraints** — What made this hard. Budget, timeline, technical limits, organizational politics. Constraints make the story real.
4. **Process** — What you actually did. Not a waterfall diagram. The real, messy process including dead ends.
5. **Key decisions** — The 2-3 decisions that mattered most. What were the options? Why did you choose what you chose?
6. **What failed** — What didn't work. What you tried and abandoned. This is where credibility lives.
7. **Outcome** — Measurable results. Revenue, conversion, engagement, adoption, time saved. Numbers beat adjectives.
8. **Reflection** — What you'd do differently. What you learned.

### Common Mistakes
- Starting with "I was tasked with..." (passive, boring)
- Showing only the happy path (nobody believes it)
- Screenshot galleries with no explanation
- Process diagrams that describe methodology, not actual work
- Focusing on deliverables instead of decisions
- No metrics (words like "improved" and "enhanced" mean nothing alone)
- Writing for other designers instead of the intended audience

## Writing Quality

### Lead with the Outcome
Don't make people read 2000 words to find out what happened. State the result upfront, then explain how you got there.

**Bad opening:** "In Q3 2024, the team identified an opportunity to improve the onboarding experience..."

**Good opening:** "We cut onboarding drop-off by 34% in six weeks. Here's the decision that made the difference."

### Show Your Thinking
Screenshots of final designs are the least interesting part. Show:
- The whiteboard sketch that unlocked the solution
- The comparison of 3 approaches you considered
- The data that changed your mind
- The prototype that users rejected (and why)

### Write for Your Audience
- For hiring managers: emphasize process, collaboration, impact
- For founders: emphasize speed, business outcomes, constraints handled
- For peers: emphasize craft decisions, technical tradeoffs, methodology

From Dragoon0x/everything-design-taste, MIT.

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