How is it going? Did you find at least 10 ideas for your portfolio projects? I know it is not easy to do. Usually, the problem with these types of exercises is that your analytical thinking kicks in and stalls the creative thinking. Instead of coming up with more ideas, you start analyzing the ideas that you already have. “Is it interesting? Is it something I really care about? How will it look in my portfolio?”… These are all valid questions. But it is best to leave them until later, until you actually have enough ideas. Then you can (and should) start asking as many questions as you can. But we are not there just yet.

Don’t worry if you didn’t get to 10 ideas. Take a look at the ideas you have, and pick one. Don’t think about it too much, just pick something that resonates with you the most. That is one perk you have now. You get to pick projects to work on 🙂

Now, when you have a general idea of what your project is, you need to define a problem that you will be solving for the case study. You might be thinking that you already know, but don’t take this step for granted. You will be surprised how many businesses jump to building solutions without actually defining the problem they are trying to solve. I don’t mean they have no idea about what they are building, or why. What I mean is, their understanding is rather shallow, and thus the resulting products either fail completely, or they fall short of customer’s expectations. We don’t want to make that mistake.

Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem, and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.”

The way I read Einstein’s quote is “The clearer (or specific) you are about the problem, the easier it is to come up with a solution”. So, let’s think about the problem, and make sure it is well defined. Besides, problem definition will become an important part of your case study, and probably the first part that everyone will see, so you should plan to spend sufficient time working on it.

I don’t know what ideas you have on your list, so I will give you a general example.

When it comes to improving existing products the starting point might be as general as “improve Spotify”, or “improve interface of a microwave oven”. It can be a bit more specific “onboarding process for Quora sucks”, or “I don’t get how to use Instagram Stories”. None of those define the problem well. Chances are these are types of requirements you might be working with in your day to day job, so it is important to learn to dive deep into the problem, and define it well.

This is the time to get analytical, and start asking lots of questions.

Let’s take a closer look at “Improve Spotify”. BTW, I am not picking on Spotify, or saying that something is obviously wrong with it. It is just one of the ideas I had for my own list of projects. I’ll guide you through my way of thinking about this particular project. This is a very general problem, so my thinking would be targeted to zero in on making it as specific as possible.

The first and most obvious thing to do is to think about particular features of Spotify: finding songs, albums, artists; playing songs, adding songs to playlists etc. Are there particular features that cause troubles to you or others? For me, I don’t like songs Spotify suggests to me. Is there a way to improve it? Right there, we found a more specific problem we can work with.

Let’s not stop there, and ask more questions:

• Is it a problem on desktop, mobile, or both versions of the app?
• Is it a problem for a specific set of users?
• Who are those users?
• Do they have a subscription?
• What are their listening habits?
  • Are they skipping around different genres, or do they stick to a particular genre?
  • Do they “like” songs?
  • Are they saving songs they like in playlists?

Some of these questions you will not have answers for, and you might have to do some research. Ask your friends, see what people online are saying. You might even want to create a poll or survey to get answers. It will be a great addition to the case study.

But there is more. Remember, how we talked about UX designers working with three factors: user needs, business goals, and technical constraints? The problem should be framed with all three in mind. So there are more questions we should ask:

• Will solving this problem have a positive impact on business?
• If so, how?

Of course, because we don’t work for Spotify we might only assume the answers. For the business side of things, it is safe to assume that better song suggestions would lead to more playback time and higher retention rates, that means more ad or subscription revenue. It is tough to say anything about technical constraints at this point, so we can safely set them aside for a bit.

Now, instead of “Improve Spotify” we can have “Improve song suggestions feature of Spotify”, or better yet “Some users are not satisfied with song suggestions in Spotify. Improving this feature will lead to higher customer satisfaction, and higher retention rates that will have a positive impact on the business”.

The research might lead to deeper insights but there is no need to include all details in the problem definition. They can be presented further in the case study.

This might look like a lot of work, but that is probably the most important work you can do for your case study.

One thing that you will notice as you are working on the problem definition, is that as the problem becomes clearer and clearer, you will start falling in love with it. Realization that it impacts you and others, and that it has business potential, should excite you! That is the reason you want to get into UX design in the first place, isn’t it?

Armed with a deep understanding, and crystal clear definition of a problem, you will be supercharged to solve the problem in no time! You might already have some ideas for how to solve the problem. Take note of them, and set them aside for now. We are going to focus on that part next.

For now, take some time to work through an idea of your choice, and work on defining it as well as you can. You should aim for a concise but comprehensive definition that speaks both to the user needs, and business goals.

← Previous – TOC – Next →