11 Inspiring UX Case Studies That Every Designer Should Study

Gene Kamenez

A UX case study is a sort of detailed overview of a designer's work. They are often part of a UX designer's portfolio and showcase the designer's skill in managing tasks and problems. From a recruiter's perspective, such a UX portfolio shows the skill, insights, knowledge, and talent of the designer.

Therefore, UX case studies play an important role in the recruitment and demand for designers.

What Makes a Powerful Case Study

Building a UX case study includes showing the design process through compelling stories. They will use plain language to demonstrate how they handled key design issues, offering a comprehensive view of their process. Well done case studies often include:

  • A  problem statement and solutions with real applications.
  • Relevant numbers, data, or testimonials to demonstrate the work and efforts.
  • A story that directly connects the problem to the solution.

Any competent UX professional will know that creating a stunning UX case study is about the little details.

11 Best UX Case Studies for Designers

The best way to understand what a good case study looks like is to go over other examples. Each of these UX case study examples shows a designer's insights, basic skills, and other designers' lessons learned through their experience.

1. Promo.com web editor

A case study of a video-creation platform

For this video-creation platform , UX designer Sascha was brought on to revamp v2.0, adding new features that could work alongside the existing UX design. The point was to work on interface details that would help create a user friendly platform, and that users could find simple enough to use.

User personas mapped by the UX designer revealed the most common confusion to be the process of inserting particular features into the video, such as subtitles. The designer's goal, therefore, was to create a platform with improved editor controls.

The designer then used a common text-editor layout to include top and side navigation bars that made it easy to access and implement text editing.

Key Learnings from Promo.com

This case study focuses on addressing a particular problem that customers were currently facing. Its main theme is to show a problem, and how the product designer addressed this problem. Its strength points include:

  • clearly highlighting the problem (i.e. inaccessible and limited video-text editor options)
  • conduction research to understand the nature of the problem and the kind of solutions customers want
  • implementing research insights into the redesign to create a platform that actively served customer needs

2. Productivity tracker app

A case study of a productivity tracker app

The main concept behind this UX case study is to address a pre-existing problem through the design of the app. Immediately from the start, the study highlights a common pain point among users: that of a lack of productivity due to device usage.

This UX case study example addressed some of the main problems within existing productivity apps included:a poor UI and UX that made navigation difficult

  • a poorly-built information architecture
  • limited functions on the mobile application

Key Learnings from the Productivity app case study

The case study highlights the simple design process that was then used to build the app. Wireframes were created, a moldboard developed, and finally, individual pages of the app were designed in line with the initial goals.

3. Postmates Unlimited

A case study of a food delivery app

This case study clearly identifies the improvements made to the Postmates app in a simple overview before jumping into greater detail. The redesign goal, which it achieved, was to improve the experience and other interface details of the app.

The problems identified included:

  • usability that led to high support ticket volume.
  • technical app infrastructure issues that prevented scalability.
  • lack of efficient product management, such as batching orders.

A UX research course can help understand the kind of research needed for a case study. The app redesign involved bringing couriers in and running usability testing on improvements. The final model, therefore, had input from real users on what worked and what caused issues.

Key Learnings from Postmates

The Postmates redesign works as a great UX case study for the simple way it approaches problem-solving. Following an overview of the work, it addresses the problems faced by users of the app. It then establishes research processes and highlights how changes were made to reduce these issues.

4. TV Guide

A case study of a video streaming platform

Addressing the fragmentation of content across channels, this case study sought to redesign how people consume media. The key problems identified included:

  • the overabundance of content across various TV and streaming platforms
  • the difficulty in discovering and managing content across all platforms

To deliver on the key goals of content personalization, smart recommendations, and offering cross-platform content search, the design process included conducting interviews, surveys, and checking customer reviews.

The design of TV Guide enables users to get custom recommendations sourced from friends' and family's watchlists.

Key Learnings from TV Guide

Like previous UX design case studies, this one tackled the issue head-on. Describing the research process, it goes into detail regarding the approach used by the UX designers to create the app. It takes readers on a journey, from identifying pain points, to testing solutions, and implementing the final version.

5. The FlexBox Inspector

A case study of a CSS flexbox tool

Designer Victoria discusses how she developed the investigator tool for the Mozilla Firefox browser. Surveys into understanding the problems with the existing CSS Flexbox tool revealed a need for a user-friendly design. Interviews with a senior designer and other designers helped developers understand the features design-focused tools ought to have. A feature analysis revealed what most users look for in such tools.

The final result of the development process was a design that incorporated several new features, including:

  • a new layout
  • color-coded design
  • multiple entry points to make workflow management efficient

Key Learnings from the Flexbox

This UX design case study starts with a clear goal, then addresses multiple user needs. It clearly defines the design process behind each feature developed by the time, and the reasoning for including that feature. To give a complete picture, it also discusses why certain features or processes were excluded.

6. The Current State of Checkouts

A case study of e-commerce checkout pages

This Baymard UX design case study looks into the checkout process in over 70 e-commerce websites. Through competitive analysis, it isolates problem points in the UX design, which, if addressed, could improve the customer's checkout process.

The study found at least 31 common issues that were easily preventable. The study was designed and conducted on a large scale, over 12 years, to incorporate changing design patterns into the review.

Recommendations based on findings include:

  • prominent guest checkout option
  • simple password requirements
  • specific delivery period
  • price comparison tool for shipping vs store pickup

Key Learnings from Checkout Case Study

Each identified issue is backed up by data and research to highlight its importance. Further research backs up each recommendation made within the case study, with usability testing to support the idea. As far as UX case studies go, this one provides practical insight into an existing, widely used e-commerce feature, and offers practical solutions.

7. New York Times App

A case study of a New York Times app

Using a creative illustration website, the designers proposed a landing page feature "Timely" that could counter the problems faced by the NYT app . Its major issues included too much irrelevant content, low usage, and undesirable coverage of content.

The goal behind Timely was to improve user incentives, build long-term loyalty, and encourage reading. Design mapping for the app covered:

  • identifying the problem
  • understanding audience needs
  • creating wireframes
  • designing and prototyping

The end result was an app that could help readers get notifications regarding news of interest at convenient moments (at breakfast, before bed). This encouraged interaction and improved readability with short-form articles.

Key Learnings from NYT App

The UX case study proposes a problem solution that works with an existing information architecture, instead adding custom graphics to the mobile app. It leads from a simple problem statement to discuss the project that could address these issues without changing was customers already loved.

A case study of the body activity monitoring app

UX case studies focused on redesign include the FitBit redesign, which started off by understanding personas and what users expect from a fitness tracker. Developing use cases and personas, Guerilla usability testing was employed to assess pain points.

These pain points were then ranked based on their importance to users and to app performance. They were addressed through:

  • Highlighting essential parts and features of the app
  • Changing easily missed icons to more recognizable icons
  • relabelling tracking options to guide users better to its usage

Key Learnings from Fitbit

While the case study maps user experiences and offers solutions, it does not begin with an intensive research-based approach. The prototype is successful in testing, but problem factors are not identified with research-based statistics, meaning key factors could have been ignored.

9. Rating System UX

a case study of a rating system

The designer behind the rating system UX redesign sought to solve issues with the 5-star rating system. Highlighted issues included:

  • the lack of subjective accuracy of a 5-point rating system
  • the issue of calculating the average of a zero-star rating
  • average ratings are misleading

Better alternatives include:

  • 5-star emoticon rating that relates the user experience
  • Like/dislike buttons that make approval/disapproval simple

The final design incorporated both these styles to make full use of the rating system.

Key Learnings from Rating System UX

The UX case study stemmed from insight into the limitations of the existing rating system. The new design addressed old issues and incorporated better efficiencies.

A case study for a content design system

The Intuit redesign was focused on making content readable, more engaging, and accessible. Looking into product personalization, the content was found to be lacking aesthetic value, as well as being hard to find. The goal was to create content that was easy to find, clear, and consistent.

The implemented solutions included:

  • increased readability with increased body text and header spacing
  • table of contents on the sidebar for easier navigation
  • visible and prominent search bar
  • illustrations and designs for pretty visuals

Key Learnings from Intuit

The Intuit case study approaches the problem from a practical point of view. It begins with isolating problems with the interface, in particular with the content. This is an example of a case study that breaks down problems into broader categories, and solves each problem with a practical solution.

A case study for a social plaform

This UX case study about a social platform tackles a commonly-faced problem from existing platforms. It addresses the issue of recognizing non-monetary user engagement, to help creators identify their user base.

The case study addresses the problem statement and establishes the design process (building wireframes and prototypes) as well as conducting user testing. The final result is to develop "Discover" pages, engaging layouts, and animated interactions to increase usability.

Key Learnings from Jambb

The study goes into detail regarding problem identification, then moves on to propose solutions that take into account the perspective of all stakeholders involved. It then explains why each design decision was made, and proves its efficacy through testing and prototyping.

Key Takeaways

Developing good UX case studies examples is as much about the details you include as the ones you leave out. Going over UX courses can give you a better understanding of what your case study should look like. A good case study should provide an overview of the problem, include numbers and statistics, and offer practical solutions that directly address the problem. The above-discussed UX case studies provide a good example of the dos and don'ts of a well-structured UX design case study that should be part of every UX portfolio .

Additional Resources

Check out these resources to learn more about UX case studies:

8 UX Case Studies to Read

UX Design Case Study

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By Peter Ramsey

Customer support Company Logo

In this chapter I discuss:

How responsive is their customer support, the experience of customer support, 1. "press 1, followed by a hash...", 2. the problem with queues, 3. holding music, 4. persistence of live chat, customer support.

Customer support Featured Image

It’s possibly irrational, but I still like the idea of being able to walk into a physical branch of a bank. Maybe it’s because I like knowing that if things got really bad, I could just turn up and complain in-person.

We’ve probably all felt the alternative: trying to complain to an online-only company, when all they have is a phone line, which nobody answers. You feel helpless.

The challenger banks—who don’t have any branches—are battling against this perception, trying to convince the world that you don’t need them at all.

Meanwhile, the incumbent banks are closing branches to reduce costs, and trying to optimise how many they keep open.

The trend is clear: in the future we will do less of our banking in-branch, and more online, likely through a mobile app.

So there’s no escaping it; great online customer service will become even more of a distinguishing factor between banks.

Summary: There are some clear winners and losers here. But overall, the user experience of customer support is desperate for some innovation.

Why you don’t need touch-tone call redirects.

Why people should copy Disneyland more.

Why playing bad hold music is terrible idea.

Why in-app page persistence is important.

To answer this, I tracked two realistic customer service scenarios over a few weeks, whilst controlling as many of the variables as I could.

The first was to see how quickly I can speak with a human over the phone. This was measured from the moment I made the call, so it includes all the time I spent listening to their automated messages.

This is because it’s misleading for a bank to claim that they answer all their calls within 5 minutes, if the user has to sit through 15 minutes of announcements first.

Avg. time taken to speak with a human on the phone

BarChart_barChartItemValue__G1rUu

Time in minutes

Notes on chart above: Mon-Fri, 9-5 • Mean avg. of 5 calls • See footnotes for full results & methodology.

But this doesn’t paint the full picture, you also need to understand how consistent the banks were.

Range of time taken to speak with a human on the phone

Time (rounded to nearest minute)

Whilst it’s certainly not a perfect study, you can clearly see a trend: some of the banks are consistently faster than others.

But what about the growing popularity of giving support over a live chat ?

I wanted to mimic the following plausible scenario: you’re trying to send a friend some money late into the evening, perhaps for a taxi, but the app keeps crashing.

Note : Co-op, Metro, First Direct and Nationwide do not have in-app live support, at least, not out of hours.

Avg. time to respond to live chat ‘out of hours’

Notes on chart above: Outside working hours • Median avg. of 5 chats • See footnotes for full results & methodology.

Yeah, Revolut only ever replied to 1/5 of my messages. Given that I couldn’t even phone them, this is unacceptable.

And when you look at how consistent the banks were with their replies, you can clearly see which ones offer suitable ‘out of hours’ support.

Range of time taken to respond to live chat ‘out of hours’

In fact, Revolut do something really strange: if they don’t reply within a few hours they just close the ticket.

null image

Whilst the results of this test are clearly anecdotal, and from a relatively small sample size, it does suggest which companies can consistently provide responsive customer support.

But what about the broader user experience? That’s what the rest of this chapter explores.

Press 1, followed by a hash, for problems with your card. Press 2, followed by a hash if you’re having problems with your mobile app. Press 3, followed by hash, if you’re having problems logging into your account. Press 4…

Wait, what was 1 again?

This is a terrible user experience . Not only is it an unnecessary memory challenge, but often none of the choices feel suitable.

Call routing like this was introduced in the 1980s, when a company would have one phone number, and it’d be printed in the local paper.

But, 40 years later, it’s nothing more than an annoyance for most users. And, it’s totally unnecessary now. This is what should happen:

1. Click on ‘help’ in the app

It’s what they’ll do first anyway.

2. In-app questions

This is the digital version of ‘press 1 for…‘, with the bonus value of being able to solve many of their issues within the app.

3. Show a call button linked to a variable number

This routes directly to the right team, based on that specific problem.

So which banks still ask you to make selections while on the phone?

Can click a direct link from the app:

Still required to use call ‘options’:

Does not have a human-operated phone line:

First Direct

Imagine queueing for a ride at Disneyland, but the queue wraps around a corner and it’s neither moving, nor can you see how long it is. It’d be frustrating, right?

But although people love to moan about long queues, there are two important subconscious things influencing their behaviour, while they’re in one.

1. You’re able to constantly re-estimate a wait time

Visually, you can guess if the queue is 5 minutes, or 5 hours.

🚶‍♂️

2. The feeling of progression is rewarding

The physical action of moving forward creates a feeling of progression.

When either of these elements are missing, the experience is considerably more frustrating. In particular, without being able to track your progress, you don’t have as good a reference for the time you’ve already invested.

Or rather: someone who knows that they’ve completed 60% of a process is more likely to continue than someone who is 6 minutes into a process of unknown length.

Imagine how much harder it’d be to climb a mountain if you didn’t know how high the peak was.

null image

In the physical world, these factors come with no effort—it’s just how queues work. But in the digital world its value needs to be recognised and implemented.

None of the banks did an adequate job of catering to these two psychological needs.

For clarity, saying “your wait time is approximately 20 minutes” at the beginning of the process is not the same. The real value is in the subconscious ability to constantly re-estimate your waiting time based on your progress and position.

Disneyland know this, and they’ve doubled down on it by anchoring different points of the queue with new approximate waiting times—this helps keep your sense of progress up, while maintaining realistic expectations.

null image

You may be thinking

“Sure, but this would be really difficult to do for a call centre queue”.

Nope, Twilio do it—if you implement their API correctly. You can set it to tell the user every 30 seconds where they are in the queue, and how long the estimated wait is.

Or even better, give them push notifications via the app to show them where they are in the queue.

To reuse the Disney analogy, imagine you’re in that queue—the one where you’re standing still—but this time there’s a speaker right next to your head.

That speaker is playing the same 20 second jingle over and over again, and for some reason it is massively distorted. Like, it’s twice as loud as it needs to be, and more distorted than you’ve heard from any speaker made in the last decade.

Well, this is precisely what hold music is. Just have a listen for yourself.

Something I need to make clear here is that the quality is not terrible because I’ve recorded it poorly, I promise you, that’s how bad they sound.

Seriously, listen to Santander’s—why it is so loud?

Making somebody sit through 20 minutes of this is a very effective way of guaranteeing that the customer is in a terrible mood when somebody finally picks up the phone.

So, which banks play the same jingle on repeat?

Plays the same jingle on repeat:

Seems to have multiple songs:

Does not play any hold music:

It’s common for apps that require authentication—like banks—to automatically log you out after a period of inactivity.

This is actually a good thing, because if you leave your phone on a table in Starbucks, and somebody finds it, they can’t access your online banking.

But the vast majority of ‘auto-locks’ happen while you’re at no risk, like when you’ve got a live chat window open and your phone goes to sleep.

It’s obvious really, but if this happens, you’d expect to reauthorise yourself, and land straight back onto the live chat. But most of the time, your journey looks more like this:

1. You’re on the live chat.

Waiting for a reply.

2. App logs you out due to inactivity.

Perhaps you’re on another app, or your phone went into sleep mode.

3. Takes you to the homepage on reboot.

When you reopen the app it just loads the normal homepage.

This is terrible UX, as you have to navigate back to your chat every time you check your phone.

So which banks kept persistence of the live chat, even after having to reauthenticate yourself?

App page was persistent:

Just puts you on the homepage:

I should add that I tested this so many times, and neither group was absolutely consistent. Very occasionally Starling would also redirect you to the chat page, but most of the time it didn’t.

Every now and then with software you see something brilliant, and it immediately feels like the obvious thing to do. It’s a rare moment, and as someone who obsesses over UX, it feels like a glimpse into the future.

Well, I had one of those moments , while I was on the phone to Monzo, navigating my way through their automated decision tree.

“Press 1 for help with your bank statements…”

I actually pressed that option by accident—which nullified the speed run—but then something amazing happened: I instantly received a notification.

null image

What Monzo have done here is exceptional. They’re using push notifications to redirect you to specific pages of their app, whilst you’re on the phone.

This is revolutionary—and I mean that literally, not hyperbolically— because it demonstrates a new way to interact with a customer.

The potential for this concept is huge. It could remove a lot of the friction from customer support:

1. To make queueing better

Push notifications to track your progress in the queue.

2. To replace hold music

Be told when you’re next—no awful music required.

🙋‍♂️

3. To prove your identity with biometrics

And get rid of telephone banking passwords.

👩‍⚕️

4. To help diagnose your problems

“We’ve sent you a notification, can you click that and tell us what happens”.

And it’s not just limited to banking. Any company that has both an app, and telephone customer support should be implementing this.

Your phone is already your wallet, your car keys, your TV and your light switch.

Well, it’s also how you’ll verify your identity on the phone, share links and solve problems with customer support agents.

Now, I appreciate that some people—particularly older customers—will probably always be reliant on the traditional methods. And that’s fine, innovation doesn’t have to immediately replace its predecessor.

In fact, it rarely does.

That was an easy way to consume 50 hours of UX research, right?

What will you dive into next?

The secrets of a $7.08 welcome bonus

The secrets of a $7.08 welcome bonus

The product psychology behind why Robinhood offer new users $7.08 of free stock, and not $10.

The (not so) subtle reason you hate chatbots

The (not so) subtle reason you hate chatbots

Virtual agents, decision trees and ChatGPT-powered conversations aren't exactly the future of customer service that we were promised.

Which is better; Zoom, Teams or Meet?

Which is better; Zoom, Teams or Meet?

Three video conferencing tools that are objectively very similar, but that often trigger a cult-like preference. But which has a better UX?

customer support ux case study

All of the UX analysis on Built for Mars is original, and was researched and written by me, Peter Ramsey.

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21 UX case studies to learn from in 2024

customer support ux case study

UX case studies are the heart of your design portfolio. They offer a peek into your design process, showcasing how you tackle challenges, your methods, and your results. For recruiters, these case studies serve as a metric for evaluating your skills, problem-solving abilities, and talent.

UX Case Studies

If you’re considering creating your own UX case study in 2024 but don’t know where to start, you’re in the right place. This article aims to inspire you with 21 carefully hand-picked UX case study examples, each offering valuable lessons.

But before we dive into these examples, let’s address a question that might be lingering: Is a UX case study truly worth the effort?

Is it worth creating a UX case study?

The short answer is yes.

Remember how in math class, showing your workings was even more important than getting the correct answer? UX case studies are like that for designers. They are more than just showcasing the final product (the polished website or app); they detail the steps taken to get there (the research, user testing, and design iterations). By showing your design process, you give potential employers or clients a peek into your thought process and problem-solving skills.

A well-laid-out case study has many benefits, including the following:

Building credibility

As case studies provide evidence of your expertise and past successes, they can build credibility and trust with potential employers or clients.

Educational value

By showing your design process, you provide valuable insights and learnings for other designers and stakeholders.

Differentiation

A compelling case study can leave a lasting impression on potential recruiters and clients, helping you stand out.

Iterative improvement

A case study is like a roadmap of each project, detailing the highs, lows, failures, and successes. This information allows you to identify areas for improvement, learn from mistakes, and refine your approach in subsequent projects.

Now that you know why a stand-out case study is so important, let’s look at 21 examples to help you get creative. The case studies will fall under five categories:

  • Language learning app
  • Learning app
  • Travel agency app
  • Intelly healthcare app
  • Cox Automotive
  • Swiftwash laundry
  • Wayfaro trip planner
  • New York Times app redesign
  • Disney+ app redesign
  • Fitbit redesign
  • Ryanair app redesign
  • Forbes app redesign
  • Enhancing virtual teaching with Google Meet
  • Airbnb’s global check-in tool
  • Spotify home shortcuts
  • AI-powered spatial banking for Apple Vision Pro
  • Sage Express

In this section, we’ll explore case studies that take us through the complete design journey of creating a digital product from scratch.

1. Language learning app

If you’re a designer looking to get your foot in the door, this is one case study you need to check out. It’s so well detailed that it helped this designer land their first role as a UX designer:

Language Learning App

Created by Christina Sa, this case study tackles the all-too-common struggle of learning a new language through a mobile app. It takes us through the process of designing a nontraditional learning app that focuses on building a habit by teaching the Korean language using Korean media such as K-pop, K-drama, and K-webtoon.

customer support ux case study

Over 200k developers and product managers use LogRocket to create better digital experiences

customer support ux case study

Key takeaway

This case study shows how a structured design process, user-centered approach, and effective communication can help you stand out. The creator meticulously laid out their design process from the exploratory research phase to the final prototype, even detailing how the case study changed their view on the importance of a design process.

If you’re searching for a comprehensive case study that details every step of the design process, look no further. This one is for you:

Jambb

This impressive case study by Finna Wang explores the creation of a fan-focused responsive platform for Jambb, an already existing social platform. The creator starts by identifying the problem and then defines the project scope before diving into the design process.

This case study shows us the importance of an iterative problem-solving approach. It identifies a problem (pre-problem statement), creates a solution, tests the solution, and then revises the problem statement based on the new findings.

3. Learning app

If you need a highly visual case study that takes you through every step of the design process in an engaging way, this one is for you:

Learning App

This case study walks us through the design of a platform where users can find experts to explain complex topics to them in a simple and friendly manner. It starts by defining the scope of work, then progresses through research, user journeys, information architecture, user flow, initial design, and user testing, before presenting the final solution.

This case study demonstrates effective ways to keep readers engaged while taking them through the steps of a design process. By incorporating illustrations and data visualization, the designer communicates complex information in an engaging manner, without boring the readers.

If you’re in search of a case study that details the design process but is also visually appealing, you should give this one a look:

GiveHub

This case study by Orbix Studio takes us through the process of designing GiveHub, a fundraising app that helps users set up campaigns for causes they’re passionate about. It starts with an overview of the design process, then moves on to identifying the challenges and proposing solutions, before showing us how the solutions are brought to life.

This case study illustrates how a visually engaging design and clear organization can make your presentation easy to grasp.

5. Travel agency app

This case study is quite popular on Behance, and it’s easy to see why:

Travel Agency App

The case study takes us through the process of creating a travel app that lets users compare travel packages from various travel agencies or groups. The creators set out a clear problem statement, propose a solution, and then show us the step-by-step implementation process. The incorporation of data visualization tools makes this case study easy to digest.

This is another case study that shows the importance of using a clearly defined design process. Going by its popularity on Behance, you can tell that the step-by-step process breakdown was well worth the effort.

6. Intelly healthcare app

If you’re looking for a UX case study that explores the design journey for both mobile and desktop versions of an app, this is one you should check out:

Intelly Healthcare App

This case study explores the process of creating Intelly, an app that transforms patient care with telemedicine, prescription management, and real-time tracking. The case study begins with a clear design goal, followed by a layout of existing problems and design opportunities. The final design is a mobile app for patients and a desktop app for doctors.

This case study highlights the importance of proactive problem-solving and creative thinking in the design process. The creators laid out some key problems, identified design opportunities in them, and effectively leveraged them to create an app.

7. Cox Automotive

If you prefer a results-oriented case study, you’ll love this one:

Cox Automotive

This case study delves into how Cox Automotive’s Manheim division, used LogRocket to optimize their customers’ digital experience for remote car auctions. It starts by highlighting the three key outcomes before giving us an executive summary of the case study. The rest of the case study takes us through the process of achieving the highlighted outcomes.

A key takeaway from this case study is the significance of using user data and feedback to enhance the digital experience continuously. Cox Automotive used LogRocket to identify and address user-reported issues, gain insights into customer behaviors, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their product.

These case studies are more focused on the visual aspects of the design process, teaching us a thing or two about presentation and delivery.

If you love a case study that scores high on aesthetics with vivid colors, cool illustrations, and fun animations, you need to check this one out:

Rebank

This case study takes us on a visual journey of creating Rebank, a digital product aimed at revolutionizing the baking industry. It starts with the research process, moves on to branding and style, and then takes us through the different screens, explaining what each one offers.

This case study illustrates the value of thinking outside the box. Breaking away from the conventional design style of financial products makes it a stand-out case study.

9. Swiftwash Laundry

If you’re looking for a case study that prioritizes aesthetics and visual appeal, you should check this one out:

Swiftwash Laundry

This case study by Orbix Studio gives us a peek into how they created Swiftwash, a laundry service app. It takes us through the steps involved in creating an intuitive, user-friendly, and visually appealing interface.

If there’s one thing to take away from this case study, it’s the value of presenting information in a straightforward manner. Besides being easy on the eye, this case study is also easy to digest. The creators lay out the problem and detail the steps taken to achieve a solution, in an easy-to-follow way, while maintaining a high visual appeal.

10. Wayfaro trip planner

If you’re looking for a concise case study with clean visuals, you should definitely check this one out:

Wayfaro Trip Planner

This Behance case study takes us through the design of Wayfaro, a trip planner app that allows users to plan their itineraries for upcoming journeys. The creators dive straight into the visual design process, showing us aspects such as branding and user flow, and explaining the various features on each screen.

This case study shows us the power of an attractive presentation. Not only is the mobile app design visually appealing, but the design process is presented in a sleek and stylish manner.

App redesign

These case studies delve into the redesign of existing apps, offering valuable insights into presentation techniques and problem-solving approaches.

11. New York Times app redesign

If you’re looking for an app redesign case study that’s impactful yet concise, this one is for you:

New York Times App Redesign

This study details the creation of “Timely,” a design feature to address issues with the NYT app such as irrelevant content, low usage, and undesirable coverage. It takes us through the process of identifying the problem, understanding audience needs, creating wireframes, and prototyping.

This case study shows us that you don’t always need to overhaul the existing app when redesigning. It suggests a solution that fits into the current information setup, adding custom graphics to the mobile app. Starting with a simple problem statement, it proposes a solution to address the app’s issues without changing what customers already enjoy.

12. Disney+ app redesign

If you’re looking for an engaging case study that’s light on information, you should check out this one:

Disney Plus App Redesign

This case study by Andre Carioca dives right into giving the user interface a little facelift to make it more fun and engaging. By employing compelling storytelling and appealing visuals, the creator crafts a narrative that’s a delight to read.

Given how popular this case study is on Behance, you can tell that the designer did something right. It shows how injecting a little playfulness can elevate your case study and make it more delightful.

13. Fitbit redesign

If you want an in-depth case study that doesn’t bore you to sleep, this one is for you:

Fitbit Redesign

This case study by Stacey Wang takes us through the process of redesigning Fitbit, a wearable fitness tracker. The creator starts by understanding personas and what users expect from a fitness tracker.

Next was the development of use cases and personas. Through a series of guerrilla tests, they were able to identify user pain points. The redesign was centered around addressing these pain points.

This case study highlights the importance of clear organization and strong visual communication. The creator goes in-depth into the intricacies of redesigning the Fitbit app, highlighting every step, without boring the readers.

14. Ryanair app redesign

If you’re bored of the usual static case studies and need something more interactive, this app redesign is what you’re looking for:

Ryanair App Redesign

This case study takes us through the process of giving the Ryanair app a fresh look. Besides the clean aesthetics and straightforward presentation, the incorporation of playful language and interactive elements makes this case study captivating.

This case study shows how adding a bit of interactivity to your presentation can elevate your work.

15. Forbes app redesign

Forbes App Redesign

This case study starts by explaining why the redesign was needed and dives deep into analyzing the current app. The creator then takes us through the research and ideation phases and shares their proposed solution. After testing the solution, they made iterations based on the results.

When it comes to redesigning an existing product, it’s a good idea to make a strong case for why the redesign was needed in the first place.

UX research

These case studies are centered around UX research, highlighting key research insights to enhance your design process.

16. Enhancing virtual teaching with Google Meet

This case study by Amanda Rosenburg, Head of User Experience Research, Google Classroom shows us how listening to user feedback can help make our products more useful and inclusive to users.

Enhancing Virtual Teaching with Google Meet

To improve the virtual teaching experience on Google Meet, the team spent a lot of time getting feedback from teachers. They then incorporated this feedback into the product design, resulting in new functionality like attendance taking, hand raising, waiting rooms, and polls. Not only did these new features improve the user experience for teachers and students, but they also created a better user experience for all Google Meet users.

When there isn’t room for extensive user research and you need to make quick improvements to the user experience, it’s best to go straight to your users for feedback.

17. Airbnb’s global check-in tool

This case study by Vibha Bamba, Design Lead on Airbnb’s Host Success team, shows us how observing user behaviors inspired the creation of a global check-in tool:

Airbnb's Global Check-in Tool

By observing interactions between guests and hosts, the Airbnb team discovered a design opportunity. This led to the creation of visual check-in guides for Airbnb guests, which they can access both offline and online.

There’s a lot to be learned from observing user behavior. Don’t limit yourself to insights obtained from periodic research. Instead, observe how people interact with your product in their daily lives. The insights obtained from such observations can help unlock ingenious design opportunities.

18. Spotify Home Shortcuts

This case study by Nhi Ngo, a Senior User Researcher at Spotify shows us the importance of a human perspective in a data-driven world:

Spotify Home Shortcuts

When the Spotify team set out to develop and launch the ML-powered Shortcuts feature on the home tab, they hit a brick wall with the naming. A/B tests came back inconclusive. In the end, they had to go with the product designer’s suggestion of giving the feature a name that would create a more human and personal experience for users.

This led to the creation of a humanistic product feature that evoked joy in Spotify’s users and led to the incorporation of more time-based features in the model, making the content more time-sensitive for users.

Although data-driven research is powerful, it doesn’t hold all the answers. So in your quest to uncover answers through research, never lose sight of the all-important human perspective.

Artificial intelligence

The following case studies are centered around the design of AI-powered products.

19. AI-powered spatial banking for Apple Vision Pro

If you want to be wowed by a futuristic case study that merges artificial intelligence with spatial banking, you should check this out:

AI-powered Spatial Banking with Apple Vision Pro

In this revolutionary case study, UXDA designers offer a sneak peek into the future with a banking experience powered by AI. They unveil their vision of AI-powered spatial banking on the visionOS platform, showcasing its features and their AI use cases.

This case study shows us the importance of pushing boundaries to create innovative experiences that cater to user needs and preferences.

20. Sage Express

If what you need is an AI case study that isn’t information-dense, this one is for you:

Sage Express

This case study by Arounda takes us through the design of Sage Express, an AI-powered data discovery tool that automatically extracts patterns, tendencies, and insights from data. It outlines the challenge, proposes a solution, and details the journey of bringing the proposed solution to life. But it doesn’t stop there: it also shows the actual results of the design using tangible metrics.

This case study underscores the importance of showing your outcomes in tangible form. You’ve worked hard on a project, but what were the actual results?

If you’re looking for a clean and well-structured AI case study, this will be helpful:

Delfi

This case study takes us through the process of creating Delfi, an AI-driven banking financial report system. It details the entire design process from onboarding to prototype creation.

If there’s one thing to learn from this case study, it’s how a well-structured presentation can simplify complex information. Although the case study is heavy on financial data, the organized layout not only enhances visual appeal but also aids comprehension.

This article has shown you 21 powerful case study examples across various niches, each providing valuable insights into the design process. These case studies demonstrate the importance of showcasing the design journey, not just the final polished product.

When creating your own case study, remember to walk your users through the design process, the challenges you faced, and your solutions. This gives potential recruiters and clients a glimpse of your creativity and problem-solving skills.

And finally, don’t forget to add that human touch. Let your personality shine through and don’t be afraid to inject a little playfulness and storytelling where appropriate. By doing so, you can craft a case study that leaves a lasting impression on your audience.

Header image source: IconScout

LogRocket : Analytics that give you UX insights without the need for interviews

LogRocket lets you replay users' product experiences to visualize struggle, see issues affecting adoption, and combine qualitative and quantitative data so you can create amazing digital experiences.

See how design choices, interactions, and issues affect your users — get a demo of LogRocket today .

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UX Research: How to Use It to Improve Customer Service

Rebecca Riserbato

Published: September 30, 2022

Customer experience is a topic we talk about a lot in the customer support field, but UX research isn't typically part of the conversation. Improving the customer experience requires effort from multiple departments, but in this post, we focus on how user experience (UX) research and customer service coexist.

UX researchers hold a focus group

When UX and customer support work together, UX can learn about patterns in customer behavior, usability problems, and customer emotions. If something is a pain for users, customer service reps will know about it and UX researchers can forge a plan to remedy the issues.

Download Our Free UX Research & Testing Kit

In this post, let's review what UX research is and how you can improve your customer service with it.

What is UX research?

Types of ux research, ux research methods, ux research interview questions, ux research tools.

UX research is the study of the user experience on a practical and functional level of product design. UX researchers are focused on making sure products and services are usable so customers can easily meet their goals.

UX research focuses on the functionality of your product/service, and not the holistic view of your brand.

The main difference between customer experience (CX) and UX research is that while CX research might focus on how confident customers are with your customer service, UX research focuses on how successfully those customers can navigate your product and self-service website with a special interest in whether it's easy to use.

This means UX researchers want to study how customers move about on your website, or in your product/app. They're thinking about questions like "What are your customers' behaviors like?" This research might involve using digital observation sessions to see how customers use your tools or you can use surveys to collect user feedback.

UX is a structured, data-driven, research-driven strategy. This type of research usually begins with qualitative methods to determine the user's motivations, and then might use quantitative methods to test the results. Let's dive into the differences between those two types of UX research now.

  • Qualitative research: This type of research is focused on attitudes — meaning it's focused on the user's feelings and emotions toward their experience. To gather this research, you'll need to conduct interviews and ask questions, like "Why did you have trouble completing a task?", or "How did you feel while using the product?" Qualitative research can be conducted using methods like interviews, focus groups, diary studies, and open-ended surveys.

  • Quantitative research: This type of research is focused on behavioral research methods gathered in the form of numbers and statistics. For UX, this means you measure things like how long it takes a user to complete a task, the percentage of users who completed the task, and how many errors they encountered on the way. With these results, you'll see where users click on a page, and what navigational path they take through your product/app/website. Some methods for quantitative UX research include usability testing, card sorting, A/B testing, evaluations, and analytics.

Now to do this research, you can use several different UX research methods. Let's review those now.

  • Usability testing.
  • Card sorting.
  • Diary studies.
  • Interviews.
  • A/B testing.
  • First click testing.
  • Accessibility evaluations.
  • Focus Groups

1. Usability testing.

The most common type of quantitative research method, usability testing is when you observe a participant trying to complete a task with your product. This will let you measure how easily people can complete a task, how quickly, what problems they encounter, and if they are satisfied with the process.

Usability testing can also be done remotely, using a platform to record the screen (and voice) and track the eye movements of participants as they interact with your product in their natural environment.

2. Card sorting.

This quantitative research method is commonly used when designing the navigation of a website to help inform information architecture. Card sorting works by having the participants of the research study organize topics into groups that make sense to them, so you can create intuitive and easy-to-navigate web pages.

3. Surveys.

With a survey or questionnaire , you can ask questions to help you with both qualitative and quantitative research. This will help you listen to your customer so you can find new problems, come up with new ideas, and collect feedback from your users.

4. Diary studies.

A diary study is a self-report of a user's activities at regular intervals to create a log of their activities, thoughts, and frustrations. This type of qualitative research takes place over a long period of time. This can help you gather organic feedback on your user's behaviors and experiences using your product in their day-to-day life. You'll find out how often they use your product or service, and why or why not. Plus, you'll learn whether they were able to complete the task or if they experienced frustrations in the process.

5. Interviews.

Similar to surveys and diary studies, you can also interview your users to gain insight into what a user wants from a potential product. If you interview more than one person at a time, this is called a focus group .

These interviews help you observe dynamic discussions and you can observe verbal and non-verbal feedback from your users by asking open-ended questions to uncover details that surveys cannot. This helps you understand your user's feelings and experiences because you can ask follow-up questions and dive deeper into the qualitative research questions.

6. A/B testing.

With A/B testing you can test two different versions of your product to see what audiences prefer. Whether it's a different navigation system or different versions of a landing page. For UX research, this could mean testing various versions of product features, navigation, or self-service website pages.

7. First click testing.

A first click test is when you examine what a user clicks on first when they're on your website and trying to complete a task. This lets you know where their eye is drawn to, and if the logic and navigation all make sense to them.

8. Accessibility evaluations.

An accessibility evaluation will take place to test your design and ensure it's accessible to everyone. How do people with disabilities interact with your design? Are there accommodations for people with disabilities? Accessibility is an important aspect of your customer experience and user experience research.

9. Analytics.

The last type of research method you can use is studying the analytics and metrics via website traffic reports. This will let you know information like traffic, bounce rates, time on page, etc.

At this point, you might be thinking, "What types of questions should I ask a user when conducting UX research?" Let's go over some UX research questions you can ask during an interview.

10. Focus Groups

A focus group is a qualitative research method that lets you have an in-depth conversation with existing, past, or potential users of your product or service. During this conversation, you can hear exactly what the end user thinks of your product in real time.

Focus groups can be done blind, also called a "blind study" for even more accurate results that won't be skewed by brand recognition (or lack thereof).

  • What is your first impression of this product/feature?
  • What do you think this product/feature does or will do?
  • When and where do you think someone would use this product/feature?
  • What do you expect to gain from using this product?
  • What would keep you from using this product?
  • Do you feel this product is similar to another one?
  • Do you trust this product?
  • You [started to shake your head] when I showed you the interface, what caused this reaction?
  • How would you go about performing [task]?
  • What do you expect to happen if you did this [task]?
  • What alternative method would you use to perform [task]?
  • Was anything surprising or did not perform as expected?
  • Was the interface easy to understand?
  • What was the easiest task to accomplish?
  • What was the hardest task to accomplish?
  • Do you feel this design was made for you? Why or why not?
  • What was the one thing you liked the most about the design?
  • What was the one thing you disliked the most about the design?
  • If you could change one thing about the design, what would it be?
  • Would you download/use this product if the change(s) were made?
  • Do you feel this is something for the desktop? Mobile? Or both?
  • Would you recommend this to a family member or friend?

Now that you're ready to get started with your user research, you'll probably want some tools to help you get the job done. Below we review some tools you can use at each step of the user research process.

  • Survey tools.
  • Usability testing tools.
  • Card sorting tools.
  • A/B testing tools.
  • Accessibility evaluation tools.

1. Survey tools.

Survey tools can help you design and format your surveys. They'll help you send your surveys to your audience, whether it's a large or small survey.

UX Research Tools for Surveys

  • HubSpot : HubSpot's feedback software takes the guesswork out of customer happiness with customizable surveys, built-in feedback dashboards, and a wide array of feedback methods at your fingertips.
  • Qualtrics : Qualtrics XM Platform provides a suite of tools that enable UX researchers to identify gaps and opportunities in their customer experience so that they can focus on building the right solutions.
  • SurveyMonkey : SurveyMonkey has built-in solutions to target feedback from employees, customers, potential customers, and other stakeholders of your business. You can choose the reason for your research (marketing, HR, etc.) and build a feedback tool to capture the quantitative or qualitative data you're looking for.

UX Research Tools for Surveys: HubSpot

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2. Usability testing tools.

Usability testing tools will help you capture insight into how your customers use your product. Tools with a video approach will help you observe customers' facial expressions and body language, screen record their experience, and hear their tone of voice. Other tools focus on providing heat maps so you see where the user's eye is drawn and what areas they click on the most.

UX Research Tools for Usability Testing

  • UserTesting : UserTesting helps UX researchers target participants for feedback on their products. It can be difficult to source participants without introducing some bias, but UserTesting can reduce the possibility of this happening.
  • Chalkmark : Chalkmark specializes in first-click testing that lets researchers identify how users interact with their website, app, and other digital platforms. This tool can measure and help you improve the number of tasks a user can complete after their first click.
  • Ethnio : If you already have tools to conduct your research, Ethnio can help you organize them in a research operations CRM.

UX Research Tools for Surveys: User Testing

3. Card sorting tools.

A digital card sorting tool will provide a platform where you can have users drag digital cards to different categories. This will help you learn whether the names and categories of products are understandable and match your customer expectations.

  • OptimalSort : OptimalSort gives you a front row seat into how people organize and categorize information. This inight helps UX researchers make decisions about product architecture.
  • Maze : Maze is one of the fastest ways to get customer-centric insights on wireframes, content, copy, and customer satisfaction. You can choose from a variety of eight tests, notable ones include prototype testing, tree testing, and the 5-second test.
  • UserLytics : In a simple, 4-step process, UserLytics can improve your user experience. You can use the platform on its own, or incorporate professional services like test plans, moderation, and analysis into your workflow to get the best insights possible.

UX Research Tools for Surveys: Optimal Sort

4. A/B testing tools.

Most marketing automation tools offer an A/B testing tool that will allow you to test different versions of an email, web page, or landing page.

UX Research Tools for A/B Testing

  • HubSpot : You can run A/B tests on your web pages using HubSpot's "Run a test" feature. After analyzing the results, deleting the lower performing variation can be done in just a few clicks.
  • FreshWorks : If you're looking to test multiple variations of a landing page, try Freshworks. It enables audience segmentation and revenue optimization features to help you get accurate measurements of the impact of your test.
  • Optimizely : Optimizely offers researchers to run A/B tests without compromising other aspects of the user experience like site speed. By using a CDN to process images and other content, your A/B test results won't be skewed by an additional variable.

UX Research Tools for Surveys: HubSpot

5. Accessibility evaluation tools.

An accessibility evaluation tool will review your website and let you know if it meets accessibility standards.

UX Research Tools for Accessibility

  • DynoMapper : DynoMapper incorporates local and international accessibility guidelines in it's testing platform so that you can test for known and potential issues on your site.
  • Remediate : Run automated accessibility checks using Remediate. It includes WCAG Guidelines, schedule testing, and re[air recommendations so you don't have to guess the best way to improve your site — you can rely on quality data.
  • TPGi : TPGi is a free tool that scans five pages of your site on a monthly basis. It looks for potential issues and offers remedies.

UX Research Tools for Surveys: DynoMapper

Improving Customer Experience with UX Research

Continued collaboration between customer support and UX researchers will help both teams achieve the same goal: a more positive customer experience that results in fewer questions and provides immediate value for your customers. UX researchers should regularly keep in touch with customer service as they have incoming customer feedback on a regular basis with a gold mine of user expectations.

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3 templates for conducting user tests, summarizing UX research, and presenting findings.

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How adopting a UX mindset changed the Shopify Help Center

Three ways we used ux thinking to improve customer support.

Robert Mousseau

Robert Mousseau

This article was co-written with Lina Tovbis.

Shopify’s Help Center is massive, with a wide range of resources crafted to help Shopify’s users face the challenges of operating a business. As Shopify Support scaled to match the company’s product growth over the past few years, we began to recognize an increasing need for UX thinking to build the best support experiences.

When we looked at user feedback, support ticket dives, and search behavior, we could see a disconnect between the language and terms used by Gurus (what we call front-line Support team members), users, the Help Center, and Shopify’s core product. Likewise, data made it clear that the Help Center suffered from a content discoverability problem: the Help Center’s UI was underused, and search did not show the most relevant results as often as it might.

We could see that the Help Center was bursting with useful information, but it could only be great if it was usable, discoverable, and tailored to meet the shifting needs of our growing user base.

Working as a systems designer (responsible for researching, analyzing, and designing high-value support experiences) and as a senior operations analyst (similarly concerned with understanding and improving support services), we are deeply familiar with Shopify Support, and we collaborate regularly with the various teams that influence support development.

To help us succeed, we started incorporating UX best practices. We started by experimenting with things like heat mapping, surveys, user interviews, and A/B testing to find out what research methods work for support. In addition to “learning by doing”, we paired with UXers at Shopify, took relevant UX courses, and attended UX conferences.

One of the first things we did was look closely at support data to understand how users experience Shopify’s Help Center. The more we looked, the more questions we had: how do we know what valuable support means for Help Center users? What does success mean for a support resource? Does success mean the same thing for Shopify’s users as it does for Support’s business obligations?

The more we learned, and the more questions we asked, the more feathers we ruffled in Support — this was how we knew we were on to something. With this in mind, here are three of our projects highlighting how a UX mindset can improve outcomes for people working on support experiences.

Making the most of user feedback

One of our first successes was a redesign of the Help Center’s user feedback form. Each page of the Help Center features a feedback form that lets users tell us how helpful a documentation article is, as well as what successes and struggles they had in their support journey to that point.

The user feedback form has changed a few times over the years: at first, it was a binary yes/no form, but the data associated with this version of the form was incomplete and regularly incorrect. It included little insight on why users rated pages they way they did, with no qualitative input to complement the quantitative score assigned by users. The form’s data compromises made it hard to work confidently with its results.

To add detail to the form’s results, we adopted a five-point scale measuring user sentiment. This form also introduced a qualitative component to gather a wider range of user insights. We hoped that by pairing qualitative feedback with more granular (but still quantitative) sentiments captured by the five-point scale, we might start to report more specifically on documentation helpfulness.

The five-point scale worked well enough: it saw decent user engagement, it gave a sense of user satisfaction with Help content, and it offered a glimpse of common user struggles with specific articles.

To understand the qualitative feedback users were submitting with the form, we applied a manual language trend analysis model to identify recurring trends across anonymized feedback submitted over time. We reviewed thousands of feedback items, noting recurring language across comments to identify common trends and user struggles with specific documentation articles.

For example, whenever multiple users would speak to struggles finding a piece of information that exists but is not clearly associated with a documentation article, we would flag the ways that documentation suffered from content discoverability issues. Likewise, if feedback showed multiple users speaking to an article’s lack of clarity, we would flag the page for not reflecting the documentation team’s style requirements. With time, we identified dozens of recurring, actionable feedback trends.

After completing this manual analysis, we generated reports with recommended actions for the documentation team to resolve user issues with Help Center sections and articles, prioritizing critical trends based on how commonly they were noted from feedback. We would share these reports with technical writers, and we would follow up with secondary reports some time after changes were applied, to understand the impact.

Despite offering some good insights on user struggles, the five-point form was imperfect: in particular, it became clear that the five-point rating scale was unnecessary. Most users rated pages either high or low, with little engagement in the middle.

Similarly, the form’s qualitative prompts were very open ended, leading users to leave a lot of general comments. Many users claimed pages were either “great!” or “the worst.” This data was hard to translate to actionable insight for technical writers, leading to a lot of feedback labeled “general positive” and “general negative.” Although actionable trends did exist in more specific user comments, parsing them was fully manual: labor intensive and time consuming.

Taking these shortcomings into account, we reconsidered the Help Center’s feedback form. We wanted the new form to provide data requiring less intensive trend analysis. We returned it to a Yes/No binary and expanded it with multiple-choice options based on trends parsed from the previous form’s qualitative results. To add additional specificity to the form’s results, we ended the form with a qualitative input for users to describe what they did or did not like about their experience relative to the multiple choice option they chose.

By funnelling users from a simplified binary rating, through multiple choice options mapping to top feedback trends, to a qualitative input informed by the selected multiple choice option, we aimed to produce more specific results.

On release, the new form was a success: in the first months after shipping, engagement with the yes/no options more than doubled the number of ratings recorded by the five-point scale. Trends recorded by the multiple choice options mapped exactly to trend percentages recorded by manual analysis of past results, and the new form successfully produced a simple helpfulness percentage for each page. All the while, analysis of qualitative inputs continued to expose actionable trends based on user reception.

To improve how teams used these feedback results, we worked with the Support Data team to produce a reporting dashboard . This centralized the results and it reduced the analysis needed to draw insights.

Combined, this provided stakeholders with more context than ever about how users feel about specific documentation articles.

Personas and journey maps

With the success of the feedback form, we were asked to explore another project rooted in UX: understanding the customer service support experience using customer service journey mapping and support user personas.

Creating a journey map can help us understand customer experiences with our products and services across different support channels. This way we can find where customers have difficulties with the support experience, or where there are gaps that we can improve.

Customer support user personas remind us that we are not the customer and that not all customers are the same. Having personas is crucial for knowing how to help these customers and they help employees remember who the customer is by sharing details about them.

In the first phase of the project, we were able to:

  • Come up with an initial set of merchant personas (6 in total) to create journey maps for. There were some personas that already existed at Shopify, but they were not focused on the support experience.
  • Create a map of merchant touch points with support.
  • Start identifying areas of high effort or areas where there are gaps in the service experience, including trying to understand which personas we might be under-serving.

This was the template that we settled on for our personas:

Because every merchant is different, we could have come up with thousands of personas and tweaked them to match all of those different merchants, but we wanted to limit ourselves to a few personas so that we can have a general understanding of particular support users. We also wanted to focus on users’ support experiences that may differ based on certain traits. To do this, we came up with some defining characteristics to create our Support personas. Some of the characteristics that we included were:

  • Merchant type — are they the store owner, or are they a staff member?
  • Support tools that they use — what are their preferred methods for learning or gathering information?
  • What makes a good day — how do they currently interact with Shopify? What is working right now? What’s causing a high-effort experience?
  • Personality — what are the problem-solving behaviours we should consider? For example, willingness to be guided. For our personas, we referred to these four personality profiles .

For the second phase of this project, we focused on research and data. We broke out into smaller working groups made up of people from Support, UX, Service Design, and Data, and picked areas of focus:

  • Continuing to develop existing personas. Mainly, focusing on personas that might be underserved or missing entirely, and understanding which personas might be having the most high-effort experiences with support.
  • Working with the Data team to make sure that our personas and business models are validated by data.
  • Setting up interviews with Gurus (Shopify’s frontline support staff) to review the existing personas and learn about how Gurus would interact with each persona.

We used data from the annual merchant survey that the UX research team puts together to add more details to our personas and make sure they align with what real merchants say about their experiences. We were happy to see that our personas lined up quite accurately with the demographics and business models in the annual merchant survey.

We interviewed 12 tenured Gurus and had them review and tweak the personas to reflect their experience helping merchants. We talked about which personas they encountered most and least often, which were the most and least complicated to help, and which might be missing. We also asked participating Gurus to share advice for new Gurus still learning how to best help merchants.

So many great insights came from these interviews. They allowed us to pass feedback along to our Quality Assurance and Training teams to create more training for new Gurus and to understand what continuing education resources we could provide our more tenured Gurus. Advice for new Gurus included:

  • Go into each interaction fresh and without any biases so you can support it properly. Conversations will be very different merchant to merchant.
  • Let the merchant have the space. You might think that you need to have low handle times (the time spent on a chat), or wrap everything in a bow, but let the conversation evolve.
  • Establish emotional states before starting troubleshooting. Instead of asking how they got where they are, establish how they’re feeling and how they’re doing.
  • See their question, and really understand it. If you don’t understand it, ask them. The idea of asking questions is under appreciated.

Building on these personas, we worked to map out a specific support experience. For the map itself, we included the different phases of a Support journey:

These phases included:

  • Feeling — How does someone feel during a Support experience? Where do the peaks and valleys form?
  • Thinking — What’s going through a person’s mind during a stage of the journey? For example, when they click a button, they might think: “Did that work? How do I know that this actually worked?”
  • Doing — What is a person’s environment as they work through a specific task or decision? For example, are they sitting at their desk with the company website open on their laptop?
  • Needs — What does a person need at any moment in a support experience? This can help us to understand expectations and assess whether or not we’re meeting user needs.
  • Opportunities — Where can we, as a company, reduce the valleys and increase the peaks for support users? To answer this question, it is best to work in cross-functional teams to avoid bias, and to ensure that the right teams are addressing issues in the best ways. For example, is this truly something that support can help with, or is this an issue with Shopify’s product?

We were able to come this far because of the incredible team that we work with. We had a lot of different backgrounds and areas of expertise from teams like Knowledge Management, Documentation, Support Research, Support Technology, and UX. We also had a couple of current and former Gurus providing their feedback. Because of this, we’re at a point where we have a strong base to work from, with a solid set of personas, and a detailed journey map to move personas through support scenarios.

Moving forward, we want to interview merchants to have them go through a specific support task and document what they’re feeling, thinking, and doing at each stage. We would eventually like to build a library cataloguing different journeys and then look for ways to improve the merchant experience.

Authentication

Finally, we were asked this past summer to understand what authentication means for support users, so we can insert authentication points to the Help Center in ways that set us up for future UX opportunities.

With authentication, users log in to the Help Center, which tells us about them and the stores their account is associated with. It also enables us to collect a range of information about a user’s session behavior. Combined with account data, we can use authentication to understand and improve user journeys through support. It also lets us expedite live support contacts by passing information about the user from their authenticated self-help session to live support agents.

To develop authenticated experiences, we worked to understand the current user journey to live channels. This helped us to decide where we could add authentication points without introducing undo friction to the chat, email, and phone funnels. We worked with the Support Data team to ensure we collected performance data when the authentication points were released.

After applying authentication points to the Help Center, we completed an analysis of the current state of authentication. We assembled existing data and research resources related to authentication, and worked closely with UX to study the user’s journey through to live channels. We shadowed Gurus who use live channels and interviewed them about their experiences, using the interviews to map the live channel experience for Gurus. We also worked closely with Support developers and Support Data to understand upcoming technology changes related to authentication.

Pairing a current view of authentication with what opportunities will open with technology changes, we helped to build an exciting roadmap for Support user authentication and personalization. The first phase of this work is in development, and (hopefully!) future projects will build on the personas and journeys work to route authenticated users to the information they need, exactly when they need it.

With every project we complete, we’re learning more about the value of UX thinking, and we’re showing its value to stakeholders. The user feedback form helped us to understand user needs in more detail, pushing technical writers to deliver even more valuable support content for Shopify’s users. Support personas and journey maps helped us to understand user journeys through Shopify support, empowering us to identify and communicate user pain points so we can improve support systems. Authentication pushed us to understand and design Support UX as part of Shopify’s broader product offering, setting the infrastructure for a more unified relationship between Shopify and Shopify support.

Each of these projects has seen increased buy-in from key teams and stakeholders. We find ourselves with a growing list of UX work, ranging from user research requests (like card sorts, user interviews, and surveys) to design work (including mock prototypes and design system development) and collaboration with product owners and developers. We’re involved with everything from data strategy to planning and conducting experiments. The timing is good: as more people use support, and as Shopify continues to expand its product to new markets, the need to understand how support can help different users is only going to get more complex.

Robert Mousseau

Written by Robert Mousseau

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How to Improve the Customer Service With the Help of UX

customer support ux case study

Hossein Raspberry

As a UX researcher, I've had many opportunities to collaborate with people from different roles. While doing so, I have realized that areas of customer service and UX — traditionally quite different things — have a lot in common. But what is good customer service? How to improve customer service with the help of user experience? In this article, I will discuss the commonalities of UX and customer service, and give tips on how to provide great customer service that will eventually improve UX.

Customer service as a resource for UX

In a perfect world, we would expect all services and products to be easily usable and understandable, so that users would never have to contact customer service. But unfortunately, this is not always the case.

Even with great UX design, users can still have issues or questions around the clock, and they will email or call you for help. While all of this is happening, the product team can be so concerned with designing pixel-perfect screens that they may neglect to consider that the experience is way more important than the product they are building.

Many product teams share a variety of principles for improving customer services. Listening to users, usability testing , and not just as the last step of a project. This can improve their design, and the result is a product with excellent customer experience. However, it’s easy to forget about one huge source of information on user expectations: customer service. 

Customer service is any act that includes taking care of the customers’ needs by providing and delivering professional, helpful, and high-quality service and assistance before, during, and after the customers’ requirements are met. That is why besides user experience research, customer service is another power source that can continuously bring in information on your users.

If something is a pain for the users, you can be assured that it’s a pain for your customer support team. Customer service and the UX team have the same ambitions: users who have no questions and no issues when using the product. 

But when a user has a question, customer support’s task is to identify the right solution and explain it using the right words so that the user understands and doesn’t need to ask again. If they reach this goal, customer support provided the user with the best digital customer experience . A UX designer’s task is to foresee these user questions when writing the copy for a certain page or creating a certain feature.

In the rest of the article, we discuss customer service tips that have a common ground with UX and design heuristics.

Thinking of customer service as a part of the user journey

Thinking of customer service as part of the user journey

When a user feels agitated when using your product, giving them an unhelpful answer is just about the worst thing you can do to your brand. Every user associates the types of answers they get from customer support with the product. If they feel the help they receive is useful, they will remember the product positivity, or at least they will not hold any grudges against your brand. However, one single frustrating or unhelpful answer from customer support can convince a user that your product is just too complex for them.

The internet is filled with statistics about how one poor experience can hurt your retention. The negative company reviews show that poor customer service can result in a bad user experience. If your users contact your customer service team, it’s because they have an issue, and this is the moment when you can build or break their trust in your product. 

If your team provides a solution when your users think they are in a confusing situation, their trust will increase, and they will love your product even more. What’s more, users are more likely to convert if they feel that a product’s customer service is good.

So don’t let your users feel frustrated. Their experience with customer service is part of their experience with your product and its user journey.

Consistency and standards

how to improve customer service with consistency

One of the basic practices in design is being consistent. It is probably one of the most important things a designer must keep in mind while going about their work. 

But how to improve customer service with consistency? Consistency in solving and answering users’ problems is of paramount importance. It looks really terrible when the user receives different replies from different support team members of the same company. Ensuring everyone in the team consistently follows the same protocol improves the standard customer services dramatically.

While relying on consistency, you should note that relying on guidelines instead of scripts is better for customer service quality. Guidelines are more organic in serving customer needs because they help the team to adapt quickly as products and services change instead of waiting for scripts to be updated.

Understanding the user’s story

how to improve customer service using customer story

In order to design a product properly, a user’s story and their pain points have to be taken into consideration. This helps product designers empathize with the users, which results in better products for these users.

By the same token, customer service representatives need to listen to and try to understand the users’ story, ask them relevant questions to help them in whatever way possible.

Users hate it when they contact customer support and feel like they do not seem to understand their problem. It is even worse when the customer support team ends up giving a completely different solution.

Updating the users about the system status

Updating the users about the system status

As UXers, we know that we need to keep users informed about what is going on with the system status. Say, what step of the onboarding stage or checkout stage the user is in. The progress bar used in many different scenarios caters to this pretty well.

This same principle is also very important in customer support cycles. Users should know how their problem is being solved and by when it will be solved. This helps in calming down an agitated customer. Additionally, it adds to the overall customer experience.

Speaking the customer’s language

how to improve customer service by speaking the same langauge with the client

The products that we design should speak the user’s language, with words and concepts familiar to them.

Similarly, customer support executives should not elevate the user’s confusion by mentioning technical terms and phrases. You should avoid the terms used within the team that might not make sense to the user.

Takeaways on how to improve customer service with UX

Customer service is a useful supply for real user experience and statistics. You can get immediate user feedback when the product goes downhill in its user experience or when it fails technically. Every user who has ever provided feedback via call or email has deliberately taken at least a few minutes to tell you what they think of your product.

User feedback through customer service, be it questions or complaints, is a gold mine of user expectations! Therefore, customer service and UX teams should listen and take the incoming feedback more seriously.

At the end of the day, customer service and UX deal with similar aims, heuristics, and skills. Listening is what customer service and UX should do best.

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UX Case Studies

What are ux case studies.

UX case studies are examples of design work which designers include in their portfolio. To give recruiters vital insights, designers tell compelling stories in text and images to show how they handled problems. Such narratives showcase designers’ skills and ways of thinking and maximize their appeal as potential hires.

“ Every great design begins with an even better story.” — Lorinda Mamo, Designer and creative director
  • Transcript loading…

Discover why it’s important to tell a story in your case studies.

How to Approach UX Case Studies

Recruiters want candidates who can communicate through designs and explain themselves clearly and appealingly. While skimming UX portfolios , they’ll typically decide within 5 minutes if you’re a fit. So, you should boost your portfolio with 2–3 case studies of your work process containing your best copywriting and captivating visual aids. You persuade recruiters by showing your skillset, thought processes, choices and actions in context through engaging, image-supported stories .

Before selecting a project for a case study, you should get your employer’s/client’s permission – whether you’ve signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) or not.

Then, consider Greek philosopher Aristotle’s storytelling elements and work with these in mind when you start building your case studies:

Plot – The career-related aspect of yourself you want to highlight. This should be consistent across your case studies for the exact role. So, if you want to land a job as a UX researcher, focus on the skills relevant to that in your case studies.

Character – Your expertise in applying industry standards and working in teams.

Theme – Goals, motivations and obstacles in your project.

Diction – A friendly, professional tone in jargon-free plain English.

Melody – Your passion—for instance, as a designer, where you prove it’s a life interest as opposed to something you just clock on and off at for a job.

Décor – A balance of engaging text and images.

Spectacle – The plot twist/wow factor—e.g., a surprise discovery. Obviously, you can only include this if you had a surprise discovery in your case study.

customer support ux case study

All good stories have a beginning, a middle and an end.

© Interaction Design Foundation. CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

How to Build UX Case Studies

You want an active story with a beginning, middle and end – never a flat report . So, you’d write, e.g., “We found…”, not “It was found…”. You should anonymize information to protect your employer’s/client’s confidential data (by changing figures to percentages, removing unnecessary details, etc.).

You can use German novelist-playwright Gustav Freytag’s 5-part pyramid :

Exposition – the introduction (4–5 sentences) . Describe your:

Problem statement – Include your motivations and thoughts/feelings about the problem.

Your solution – Outline your approach. Hint at the outcome by describing your deliverables/final output.

Your role – Explain how your professional identity matched the project.

Stages 2–4 form the middle (more than 5 sentences) . Summarize the process and highlight your decisions:

Rising action – Outline some obstacles/constraints (e.g., budget) to build conflict and explain your design process (e.g., design thinking ). Describe how you used, e.g., qualitative research to progress to 1 or 2 key moments of climax.

Climax – Highlight this, your story’s apex, with an intriguing factor (e.g., unexpected challenges). Choose only the most important bits to tighten narrative and build intrigue.

Falling action – Show how you combined your user insights, ideas and decisions to guide your project’s final iterations. Explain how, e.g., usability testing helped you/your team shape the final product.

Stage 5 is the conclusion:

Resolution – (4–5 sentences) . Showcase your end results as how your work achieved its business-oriented goal and what you learned. Refer to the motivations and problems you described earlier to bring your story to an impressive close.

Overall, you should:

Tell a design story that progresses meaningfully and smoothly .

Tighten/rearrange your account into a linear, straightforward narrative .

Reinforce each “what” you introduce with a “how” and “why” .

Support text with the most appropriate visuals (e.g., screenshots of the final product, wireframing , user personas , flowcharts , customer journey maps , Post-it notes from brainstorming ). Use software (e.g., Canva, Illustrator) to customize good-looking visuals that help tell your story .

Balance “I” with “we” to acknowledge team-members’ contributions and shared victories/setbacks.

Make your case study scannable – E.g., Use headings as signposts.

Remove anything that doesn’t help explain your thought process or advance the story .

In the video, Michal Malewicz, Creative Director and CEO of Hype4, has some tips for writing great case studies.

customer support ux case study

Typical dramatic structure consists of an exposition and resolution with rising action, climax and falling action in between.

Remember, hirers want to quickly spot the value of what you did— e.g., research findings—and feel engaged every step of the way . They’ll evaluate how you might fit their culture. Use the right tone to balance your passion and logic in portraying yourself as a trustworthy team player. Sometimes, you may have to explain why your project didn’t work out ideally. The interaction design process is iterative, so include any follow-up actions you took/would take. Your UX case studies should project the thoughts, feelings and actions that define how you can shape future designs and create value for business.

Learn More about UX Case Studies

Take our UX Portfolio course to see how to craft powerful UX case studies.

UX designer and entrepreneur Sarah Doody offers eye-opening advice about UX case studies .

Learn what can go wrong in UX case studies .

See fine examples of UX case studies .

Questions related to UX Case Studies

A UX case study showcases a designer's process in solving a specific design problem. It includes a problem statement, the designer's role, and the solution approach. The case study details the challenges and methods used to overcome them. It highlights critical decisions and their impact on the project.

The narrative often contains visuals like wireframes or user flowcharts. These elements demonstrate the designer's skills and thought process. The goal is to show potential employers or clients the value the designer can bring to a team or project. This storytelling approach helps the designer stand out in the industry.

To further illustrate this, consider watching this insightful video on the role of UX design in AI projects. It emphasizes the importance of credibility and user trust in technology. 

Consider these three detailed UX/UI case studies:

Travel UX & UI Case Study : This case study examines a travel-related project. It emphasizes user experience and interface design. It also provides insights into the practical application of UX/UI design in the travel industry.

HAVEN — UX/UI Case Study : This explores the design of a fictional safety and emergency assistance app, HAVEN. The study highlights user empowerment, interaction, and interface design. It also talks about the importance of accessibility and inclusivity. 

UX Case Study — Whiskers : This case study discusses a fictional pet care mobile app, Whiskers. It focuses on the unique needs of pet care users. It shows the user journey, visual design, and integration of community and social features.

Writing a UX case study involves several key steps:

Identify a project you have worked on. Describe the problem you addressed.

Detail your role in the project and the specific actions you took.

Explain your design process, including research , ideation , and user testing.

Highlight key challenges and how you overcame them.

Showcase the final design through visuals like screenshots or prototypes . This video discusses why you should include visuals in your UX case study/portfolio.

Reflect on the project's impact and any lessons learned.

Conclude with the outcomes. Showcase the value you provided.

A well-written case study tells a compelling story of your design journey. It shows your skills and thought process.

A case study in UI/UX is a detailed account of a design project. It describes a designer's process to solve a user interface or user experience problem. The case study includes

The project's background and the problem it addresses.

The designer's role and the steps they took.

Methods used for research and testing.

Challenges faced and how the designer overcame them.

The final design solutions with visual examples.

Results and impact of the design on users or the business.

This case study showcases a designer’s skills, decision-making process, and ability to solve real-world problems.

A UX writing case study focuses on the role of language in user experience design. It includes:

The project's background and the specific language-related challenges.

The UX writer's role and the strategies they employed.

How did they create the text for interfaces, like buttons or error messages?

Research and testing methods used to refine the language.

Challenges encountered and solutions developed.

The final text and its impact on user experience and engagement.

Outcomes that show how the right words improved the product's usability.

You can find professionals with diverse backgrounds in this field and their unique approaches to UX writing. Torrey Podmakersky discusses varied paths into UX writing careers through his video. 

Planning a case study for UX involves several steps: 

First, select a meaningful project that showcases your skills and problem-solving abilities. Gather all relevant information, including project goals, user research data, and design processes used. 

Next, outline the structure of your case study. This should include the problem you addressed, your role, the design process, and the outcomes. 

Ensure to detail the challenges faced and how you overcame them. 

To strengthen your narrative, incorporate visuals like wireframes, prototypes, and user feedback . 

Finally, reflect on the project's impact and what you learned. 

This careful planning helps you create a comprehensive and engaging case study.

Presenting a UX research case study involves clear organization and storytelling. 

Here are eight guidelines:

Introduction: Start with a brief overview of the project, including its objectives and the key research question.

Background: Provide context about the company, product, or service. Explain why you did the research. 

Methodology: Detail the research methods, like surveys, interviews, or usability testing. 

Findings: Present the key findings from your research. Use visuals like charts or user quotes to better present the data. 

Challenges and Solutions: Discuss any obstacles encountered during the research and how you addressed them.

Implications: Explain how your findings impacted the design or product strategy.

Conclusion: Summarize the main points and reflect on what you learned from the project.

Appendix (if necessary): Include any additional data or materials that support your case study.

UX case studies for beginners demonstrate the fundamentals of user experience design. They include:

A defined problem statement to clarify the user experience issue.

Descriptions of research methods used for understanding user needs and behaviors.

Steps of the design process, showing solution development. The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process illustrate these steps in detail. 

Visual elements, such as sketches, wireframes, or prototypes, illustrate the design stages.

The final design solution emphasizes its impact on user experience.

Reflections on the project's outcomes and lessons learned.

These case studies guide beginners through the essential steps and considerations in UX design projects. Consider watching this video on How to Write Great Case Studies for Your UX Design Portfolio to improve your case studies.

To learn more about UX case studies, two excellent resources are available:

Article on Structuring a UX Case Study : This insightful article explains how to craft a compelling case study. It emphasizes storytelling and the strategic thinking behind UX design, guided by expert opinions and industry insights.

User Experience: The Beginner's Guide Course by the Interaction Design Foundation: This comprehensive course offers a broad introduction to UX design. It covers UX principles, tools, and methods. The course provides practical exercises and industry-recognized certification. This course is valuable for aspiring designers and professionals transitioning to UX.

These resources provide both theoretical knowledge and practical application in UX design.

Literature on UX Case Studies

Here’s the entire UX literature on UX Case Studies by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about UX Case Studies

Take a deep dive into UX Case Studies with our course How to Create a UX Portfolio .

Did you know the average UX recruiter spends less than 5 minutes skimming through your UX portfolio? If you want to join the growing and well-paid field of UX design, not only do you need a UX portfolio— you’ll need a great UX portfolio that showcases relevant skills and knowledge . Your UX portfolio will help you get your first job interviews and freelance clients, and it will also force you to stay relevant in your UX career. In other words, no matter what point you’re at in your UX career, you’re going to need a UX portfolio that’s in tip-top condition.

So, how do you build an enticing UX portfolio, especially if you’ve got no prior experience in UX design? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll learn in this course! You’ll cover everything so you can start from zero and end up with an incredible UX portfolio . For example, you’ll walk through the various UX job roles, since you can’t begin to create your portfolio without first understanding which job role you want to apply for! You’ll also learn how to create your first case studies for your portfolio even if you have no prior UX design work experience. You’ll even learn how to navigate non-disclosure agreements and create visuals for your UX case studies.

By the end of this practical, how to oriented course, you’ll have the skills needed to create your personal online UX portfolio site and PDF UX portfolio. You’ll receive tips and insights from recruiters and global UX design leads from SAP, Oracle and Google to give you an edge over your fellow candidates. You’ll learn how to craft your UX case studies so they’re compelling and relevant, and you’ll also learn how to engage recruiters through the use of Freytag’s dramatic structure and 8 killer tips to write effectively. What’s more, you’ll get to download and keep more than 10 useful templates and samples that will guide you closely as you craft your UX portfolio. To sum it up, if you want to create a UX portfolio and land your first job in the industry, this is the course for you!

All open-source articles on UX Case Studies

How to write the conclusion of your case study.

customer support ux case study

  • 5 years ago

How to create the perfect structure for a UX case study

customer support ux case study

What Should a UX Design Portfolio Contain?

customer support ux case study

How to write the beginning of your UX case study

customer support ux case study

What is a UX Portfolio?

customer support ux case study

How to write the middle or “process” part of your case study

customer support ux case study

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Design, UI, UX , Inspiration

15 excellent ux case studies every creative should read.

  • By Sandra Boicheva
  • October 21st, 2021

In a previous article, we talked about UX portfolios and how they carefully craft a story of how designers work. Interestingly enough, recruiters decide if a UX freelance designer or an agency is a good match within 5 minutes into the portfolio . In order to persuade these recruiters, the portfolio needs to present an appealing story that showcases the skill, the thought process, and the choices taken for key parts of the designs. With this in mind, today we’ll talk about UX case studies and give 15 excellent examples of case studies with compelling stories.

The Storytelling Approach in UX Case Studies

An essential part of the portfolio of a UX designer is the case studies that pack a showcase of the designer’s skills, way of thinking, insights in the form of compelling stories. These case studies are often the selling point as recruiters look for freelancers and agencies who can communicate their ideas through design and explain themselves in a clear and appealing way. So how does this work?

Photography by Alvaro Reyes

Just like with every other story, UX case studies also start with an introduction, have a middle, and end with a conclusion .

  • Introduction: This UX case study example starts with a design brief and presents the main challenges and requirements. In short, the UX designer presents the problem, their solution, and their role.
  • Middle: The actual story of the case study example explains the design process and the techniques used. This usually starts with obstacles, design thinking, research, and unexpected challenges. All these elements lead to the best part of the story: the action part. It is where the story unveils the designer’s insights, ideas, choices, testing, and decisions.
  • Conclusion: The final reveal shows the results and gives space for reflection where the designer explains what they’ve learned, and what they’ve achieved.

Now as we gave you the introduction, let’s get to the main storyline and enjoy 15 UX case studies that tell a compelling story.

1. Car Dealer Website for Mercedes-Benz Ukraine by Fulcrum

This case study is a pure pleasure to read. It’s well-structured, easy to read, and still features all the relevant information one needs to understand the project. As the previous client’s website was based on the official Mercedes Benz template, Fulcrum had to develop an appealing and functional website that would require less time to maintain, be more user-friendly, and increase user trust.

  • Intro: Starts with a summary of the task.
  • Problem: Lists the reasons why the website needs a redesign.
  • Project Goals: Lists the 4 main goals with quick summaries.
  • Project: Showcases different elements of the website with desktop and mobile comparison.
  • Functionality: Explains how the website functionality helps clients to find, and order spare parts within minutes.
  • Admin Panel: Lists how the new admin panel helps the client customize without external help.
  • Elements: Grid, fonts, colors.
  • Tech Stack: Shows the tools used for the backend, mobile, admin panel, and cloud.
  • Client review: The case study ends with a 5-star review by the marketing director of Mercedes Benz Ukraine, Olga Belova.

This case study is an example of a detailed but easy to scan and read story from top to bottom, featuring all relevant information and ending on the highest note: the client’s review.

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2. Galaxy Z Flips 5G Website by DFY

This is a big project that covers every aspect of the website, including the UX strategy. The creative studio aimed to fully illustrate and demonstrate the significant upgrades over previous models and to enable two-way communication with the customers through an interactive experience.

  • Intro: Summary of the project and roles.
  • Interactive Experience: The main project goal.
  • Demonstration: Explains the decision to feature 360-degree views and hands-on videos instead of technical terms.
  • Screens: Includes high-quality screenshots of significant pages and features.
  • Ecosystem: Highlight a page with easy navigation across different products as a marketing decision that makes cross-selling seamless.
  • Essentials: Showcases a slider of all products with key features that provide ample information.
  • Showroom: Interactive experience that helps the user “play around” with the product.
  • Credits: As a conclusion, DFY features the stakeholders involved.

A strong presentation of a very ambitious project. It keeps the case study visual while still providing enough insight into the thought process and the most important decisions.

3. Jambb Social Platform by Finna Wang

Here we have a beautiful case study for a platform that aims to help creators grow their communities by recognizing and rewarding their base of supporters. It tackles a curious problem that 99% of fans who contribute in non-monetary ways don’t get the same content, access, and recognition they deserve. This means the creators need a way to identify their fans across all social platforms to grow their business and give recognition. To get a clear picture of what the design has to accomplish, Finna Wang conducted stakeholder interviews with the majority of the client’s team.

  • Intro: Listing roles, dates, team, and used tools.
  • Project Overview: The main concept and the reasons behind it.
  • Exploration: What problem will the platform solve, preliminary research, and conclusions from the research.  The section includes the project scope and problem statement.
  • Design Process: A thorough explanation of the discoveries and the exact steps.
  • User Flows:  3 user flows based on common tasks that the target user/fan would do on the site.
  • Design Studio: Visualization process with wireframes, sitemap, prototypes.
  • Design Iterations: The designer highlights the iterations they were primary behind.
  • Style Guide: Typography, colors, visual elements breakdown.
  • Usability Testing: Beta site vs Figma prototype; usertesting.com, revised problem statement.
  • Prototype: Features an accessible high fidelity prototype in Figma you can view.
  • Takeaways: Conclusions.

An extremely detailed professionally made and well-structured UX case study. It goes a step further by listing specific conclusions from the conducted research and featuring an accessible Figma prototype.

4. Memento Media by Masha Keyhani

This case study is dedicated to a very interesting project for saving family stories. It aims to help users capture and record memories from their past. To do so, the design team performed user research and competitive analysis. The entire project took a 6-week sprint.

  • Overview: Introducing the client and the purpose of the app.
  • My Role: Explaining the roles of the designer and their team.
  • Design Process: A brief introduction of the design process and the design toolkit
  • Home: The purpose of the Homepage and the thought process behind it.
  • Question Selection: The decision behind this screen.
  • Recording Process: Building the recording feature and the decisions behind it.
  • User research: a thorough guide with the main focuses, strategies, and competitor analysts, including interviews.
  • Research Objectives: The designer gives the intent of their research, the demographics, synthesis, and usability testing insights.
  • Propositions: Challenges and solutions
  • User Flow: Altering the user flow based on testing and feedback.
  • Wireframes: Sketches, Lo-Fi wireframing.
  • Design System: Typography, colors, iconography, design elements.
  • The Prototype: It shows a preview of the final screens.

This UX study case is very valuable for the insights it presents. The design features a detailed explanation of the thinking process, the research phase, analysts, and testing which could help other creatives take some good advice from it for their future research.

5. Perfect Recipes App by Tubik

Here we have a UX case study for designing a simple mobile app for cooking, recipes, and food shopping. It aims to step away from traditional recipe apps by creating something more universal for users who love cooking with extended functionality. The best idea behind it is finding recipes based on what supplies the user currently has at home.

  • Intro: Introducing the concept and the team behind it.
  •  Project: What they wanted to make and what features would make the app different than the competitors.
  • UI design: The decisions behind the design.
  • Personalization: Explaining how the app gives the user room for personalization and customizing the features according to their personal preferences.
  • Recipe Cards and Engaging Photos: The decisions behind the visuals.
  • Cook Now feature: Explaining the feature.
  • Shopping List: Explaining the feature.
  • Pantry feature:  The idea to sync up the app with AmazonGo services. This case study section features a video.
  • Bottom Line: What the team learned.

This UX case study is a good example of how to present your concept if you have your own idea for an app. You could also check the interactive preview of the app here .

6. SAM App by Mike Wilson

The client is the Seattle Art Museum while the challenge is to provide engaging multimedia content for users as well as self-guided tours. Mile Wilson has to create an experience that will encourage repeat visits and increase events and exhibition attendance.

  • Intro: Listing time for the project, team members, and roles.
  • The Client: A brief introduction of Seattle Art Museum
  • The Challenge: What the app needs to accomplish.
  • Research and Planning: Explaining the process for gathering insights, distributing surveys, interviews, and identifying specific ways to streamline the museum experience.
  • Sloane: Creating the primary persona. This includes age, bio, goals, skills, and frustrations.
  • Designing the Solution: Here the case study features the results of their research, information architecture, user flows, early sketching, paper prototypes, and wireframes.
  • Conclusion: Explaining the outcome, what the team would have done differently, what’s next, and the key takeaways.

What we can take as a valuable insight aside from the detailed research analysis, is the structure of the conclusion. Usually, most case studies give the outcome and preview screens. However, here we have a showcase of what the designer has learned from the project, what they would do differently, and how they can improve from the experience.

7. Elmenus Case Study

This is a case study by UX designers Marwa Kamaleldin, Mario Maged, Nehal Nehad, and Abanoub Yacoub for redesigning a platform with over 6K restaurants. It aims to help users on the territory of Egypt to find delivery and dine-out restaurants.

  • Overview: What is the platform, why the platform is getting redesigned, what is the target audience. This section also includes the 6 steps of the team’s design process.
  • User Journey Map: A scheme of user scenarios and expectations with all phases and actions.
  • Heuristic Evaluation: Principles, issues, recommendations, and severity of the issues of the old design.
  • First Usability Testing: Goals, audience, and tasks with new user scenarios and actions based on the heuristic evaluation. It features a smaller section that lists the most severe issues from usability for the old design.
  • Business Strategy: A comprehensive scheme that links problems, objectives, customer segment, measurements of success, and KPIs.
  • Solutions: Ideas to solve all 4 issues.
  • Wireframes: 4 directions of wireframes.
  • Styleguide: Colors, fonts, typeface, components, iconography, spacing method.
  • Design: Screens of the different screens and interactions.
  • Second Usability Testing: Updated personas, scenarios, and goals. The section also features before-and-after screenshots.
  • Outcome: Did the team solve the problem or not.

A highly visual and perfectly structured plan and process for redesigning a website. The case study shows how the team discovers the issues with the old design and what decisions they made to fix these issues.

8. LinkedIn Recruiter Tool by Evelynma

A fresh weekend project exploring the recruiting space of LinkedIn to find a way to help make it easier for recruiters to connect with ideal candidates.

  • Background Info: What made the designer do the project.
  • Problem and Solution: A good analysis of the problem followed by the designer’s solution.
  • Process: This section includes an analysis of interviewing 7 passive candidates, 1 active candidate, 3 recruiters, and 1 hiring manager. The designer also includes their journey map of the recruiting experience, a sketch of creating personas, and the final 3 personas.
  • Storyboard and User Flow Diagrams: The winning scenario for Laura’s persona and user flow diagram.
  • Sketches and Paper Prototypes: Sticky notes for paper prototypes for the mobile experience.
  • Visual Design: Web and mobile final design following the original LinkedIn pattern.
  • Outcome: Explaining the opportunity.

This is an excellent UX case study when it comes to personal UX design projects. creating a solution to a client’s problem aside, personal project concepts is definitely something future recruiters would love to see as it showcases the creativity of the designers even further.

9. Turbofan Engine Diagnostics by Havana Nguyen

The UX designer and their team had to redesign some legacy diagnostics software to modernize the software, facilitate data transfers from new hardware, and improve usability. They built the desktop and mobile app for iOS and Android.

  • Problem: The case study explain the main problem and what the team had to do to solve it.
  • My Role: As a lead UX designer on a complicated 18-month project, Havana Nguyen had a lot of work to do, summarized in a list of 5 main tasks.
  • Unique Challenges: This section includes 4 main challenges that made the project so complex. ( Btw, there’s a photo of sketched wireframes literally written on the wall.)
  • My Process: The section includes a description of the UX design process highlighted into 5 comprehensive points.
  • Final Thoughts: What the designer has learned for 18 months.

The most impressive thing about this case study is that it manages to summarize and explain well an extremely complex project. There are no prototypes and app screens since it’s an exclusive app for the clients to use.

10. Databox by FireArt

A very interesting project for Firearts’s team to solve the real AL & ML challenges across a variety of different industries. The Databox project is about building scalable data pipeline infrastructure & deploy machine learning and artificial intelligence models.

  • Overview: The introduction of the case study narrows down the project goal, the great challenge ahead, and the solution.
  • How We Start: The necessary phases of the design process to get an understanding of a product.
  • User Flow: The entire scheme from the entry point through a set of steps towards the final action of the product.
  • Wireframes: A small selection of wireframe previews after testing different scenarios.
  • Styleguide: Typography, colors, components.
  • Visual Design: Screenshots in light and dark mode.

A short visual case study that summarizes the huge amount of work into a few sections.

11. Travel and Training by Nikitin Team

Here’s another short and sweet case study for an app with a complete and up-to-date directory of fitness organizations in detailed maps of world cities.

  • Overview: Explaining the project.
  • Map Screen : Outlining the search feature by categories.
  • Profiles: Profile customization section.
  • Fitness Clubs: Explaining the feature.
  • Icons: A preview of the icons for the app.
  • App in Action: A video of the user experience.

This case study has fewer sections, however, it’s very easy to read and comprehend.

12. Carna by Ozmo

Ozmo provides a highly visual case study for a mobile application and passing various complexities of courses. The main goal for the UX designer is to develop a design and recognizable visual corporate identity with elaborate illustrations.

  • Intro: A visual project preview with a brief description of the goal and role.
  • Identity: Colors, fonts, and logo.
  • Wireframes: The thinking process.
  • Interactions: Showcase of the main interactions with animated visuals.
  • Conclusion: Preview of the final screens.

The case study is short and highly visual, easy to scan and comprehend. Even without enough insight and text copy, we can clearly understand the thought process behind and what the designer was working to accomplish.

13. An Approach to Digitization in Education by Moritz Oesterlau

This case study is for an online platform for challenge-based learning. The designer’s role was to create an entire product design from research to conception, visualization, and testing. It’s a very in-depth UX case study extremely valuable for creatives in terms of how to structure the works in their portfolio.

  • Intro: Introducing the client, project time, sector, and the designer’s role.
  • Competitive Analysis: the case study starts off with the process of creating competitive profiles. It explains the opportunities and challenges of e-learning that were taken into consideration.
  • Interviews and Surveys: Listing the goals of these surveys as well as the valuable insights they found.
  • Building Empathy: The process and defining the three target profiles and how will the project cater to their needs. This section includes a PDF of the user personas.
  • Structure of the Course Curriculum: Again with the attached PDF files, you can see the schemes of the task model and customer experience map.
  • Information Architecture: The defined and evaluated sitemap for TINIA
  • Wireframing, Prototyping, and Usability Testing :  An exploration of the work process with paper and clickable prototypes.
  • Visual Design: Styleguide preview and detailed PDF.
  • A/B and Click Tests: Reviewing the usability assumptions.
  • Conclusion: A detailed reflection about the importance of the project, what the designer learned, and what the outcome was.

This is a very important case study and there’s a lot to take from it. First, the project was too ambitious and the goal was too big and vague. Although the result is rather an approximation and, above all, at the conceptual level requires further work, the case study is incredibly insightful, informative, and insightful.

14. In-class Review Game by Elizabeth Lin

This project was never realized but the case study remains and it’s worth checking out. Elizabeth Lin takes on how to create an engaging in-class review game with a lot of research, brainstorming, and a well-structured detailed process.

  • Intro: What makes the project special.
  • Research: Explaining how they approached the research and what they’ve learned.
  • Brainstorming: the process and narrowing all How Might We questions to one final question: How might we create an engaging in-class math review game.
  • Game Loop and Storyboarding: Sketch of the core game loop and the general flow of the game.
  • Prototyping: Outlining basic game mechanics and rounds in detail.
  • Future Explorations: The case study goes further with explorations showing how the product could look if we expanded upon the idea even further.
  • What Happened?:  The outcome of the project.

This case study tells the story of the project in detail and expands on it with great ideas for future development.

15. Virtual Makeup Studio by Zara Dei

And for our last example, this is a case study that tells the story of an app-free shippable makeover experience integrated with the Covergirl website. The team has to find a way to improve conversion by supporting customers in their purchase decisions as well as to increase basket size by encouraging them to buy complementary products.

  • Intro: Introducing the project and the main challenges.
  • Discovery and Research: Using existing product information on the website to improve the experience.
  • Onboarding and Perceived Performance: Avoiding compatibility issues and the barrier of a user having to download an app. The section explains the ideas for features that will keep users engaged, such as a camera with face scan animation.
  • Fallback Experience and Error States: Providing clear error messaging along with troubleshooting instructions.
  • Interactions: explaining the main interactions and the decisions behind them.
  • Shared Design Language: Explaining the decision to provide links on each product page so users could be directed to their preferred retailer to place their order. Including recommended products to provide users with alternatives.
  • Outcome and Learning: The good ending.
  • Project Information: Listing all stakeholders, the UX designer’s role in a bullet list, and design tools.

In Conclusion

These were the 15 UX case studies we wanted to share with you as they all tell their story differently. If we can take something valuable about what are the best practices for making an outstanding case study, it will be something like this.

Just like with literature, storytelling isn’t a blueprint: you can write short stories, long in-depth analyses, or create a visual novel to show your story rather than tell. The detailed in-depth UX case studies with lots of insights aren’t superior to the shorter visual ones or vice versa. What’s important is for a case study to give a comprehensive view of the process, challenges, decisions, and design thinking behind the completed project .

In conclusion, a UX case study should always include a summary; the challenges; the personas; roles and responsibilities; the process; as well as the outcomes, and lessons learned.

Video Recap

Take a look at the special video we’ve made to visualize and discuss the most interesting and creative ideas implemented in the case studies.

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In the meantime, why not browse through some more related insights on web development and web design?

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20+ Outstanding UX/UI Design Case Studies

20+ Outstanding UX/UI Design Case Studies preview

Discover an expertly curated collection of 20+ inspirational UX/UI design case studies that will empower you to create outstanding case studies for your own portfolio.

  • Comprehensive end-to-end case studies covering research, ideation, design, testing, and conclusions.
  • Perfect for designers building portfolios and looking for inspiration to create their own case studies.
  • Learn new methods and techniques, improve your understanding, and apply them to your projects.
  • Gain insights from the successes and challenges of accomplished designers.

Want to get access to 30+ more case studies including smart tagging system?

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All case studies included in this collection are sourced from real designers' portfolios and are used for the purpose of learning and inspiration. The original authors retain all rights to their work.

Bento Mobile Design Mockup Widgets Template

  • UX Case Study: New Customer Onboarding Journey Map

My challenge: What types of support do new customers need in the first 90 days?

My client wanted to understand their new customers’ frustrations, moments of delight, and overall experience in order to improve product adoption and self-service.

My role in this project was lead researcher. The subsequent implementation phase was led by the client’s internal teams.

Pre-research activities:

  • Conduct workshops with subject matter experts to develop journey map hypotheses and identify knowledge gaps
  • Review existing customer research
  • Receive product demos from product owners

Customer research activities:

  • Conduct 3-month-long diary study with new customers, including multiple phone interviews with each participant
  • Communicate research findings to the project team throughout study
  • Analyze diaries and phone interview findings

Journey map activities:

  • Organize research insights into themes
  • Develop customer journey map, including key themes, opportunities, touchpoints, and customer sentiment
  • Socialize final journey map throughout organization
  • Consult on new customer communication strategy and tactical plans

During this project, I worked with a wide cross-section of the organization: sales representatives, customer service representatives, marketing communication specialists, product designers, product owners, marketing researchers, executive leadership, and other business stakeholders.

My primary client (and research partner) was the new customer marketing communication manager.

The entire planning, research, and mapping phase took approx. 10 months to complete.

Step 1: Discovery

Duration: 1 month

Prior to this project, I had a limited understanding of the current state customer onboarding experience.

My first step for this project was to learn everything the organization already knew. To do this, I assembled multiple workshops with customer-facing groups to create empathy maps (i.e., think, feel, do).

Next, I tracked down prior research and thinking to help me assemble a clearer picture of the current experience.

Step 2: Journey Map Draft

Duration: 2 months

To sort out everything I had gathered so far, I created a draft of the journey map . I did this prior to conducting any customer research because I wanted a visual to help me:

  • Identify knowledge gaps
  • Identify assumptions to evaluate

I socialized this early draft with key stakeholders to find more gaps and develop additional hypotheses.

Step 3: Diary Study

Duration: 4 months

In my customer research plan , I outlined my research approach, target audience, recruiting methodology, and overall research objectives.

Once the research plan was approved, next I created a screener and discussion guides. I recruited 26 new customers via an email invitation prior to them using the product the first time.

The diary study included 2 components:

  • Written diary
  • Phone interviews at key points in the journey (i.e., before using product the first time, while using product, study wrap-up)

I used Google Docs for the customer diaries, which allowed me to observe diary entries in real time and add questions or comments along the way.

Participants documented every time they used the product (what they did and when), their experience using it, and how each experience made them feel (sentiment).

To bring along business stakeholders and help them stay connected to the research, I led bi-weekly status meetings to share the raw findings.

Over the 3-month study, I collected more than 2,000 diary entries.

Step 4: Research Analysis

At the conclusion of the study, I exported all diary entries into a spreadsheet.

I hand-coded each entry for:

  • Touchpoints
  • Sentiment (positive, neutral, negative)
  • Emotion (e.g., happy, frustrated)
  • Journey stage (e.g., beginning, middle)

If more than half of the participants documented the same theme (e.g., frustration about a particular topic), I included it as a key finding for the journey map.

Step 5: Journey Map + Strategy

In examining dozens of themes and emotions, very clear patterns emerged. I used a lot of sticky notes to help me see higher-level insights and relationships.

Next, I charted the participants’ emotions, key activities, and communications during each stage of their journey.

I used Visio to create the journey map.

The final journey map measured 48”H x 42”W (printed in full-color on poster paper), and included several visuals to reinforce the themes, sub-themes, and journey stages.

Next, my client partner and I boiled down the research into a single key insight (a North Star everyone could rally behind), and then collaboratively developed a 3-prong communication strategy to better support and engage new customers going forward.

Step 6: Knowledge Transfer

Duration: Ongoing

The final step was transferring the knowledge gained during the study to rest of the organization. In many cases, the journey map validated information client stakeholders had heard anecdotally. Other times, stakeholders were surprised by certain customer behaviors or attitudes.

Since the completion of the journey map, this client has made dozens of significant changes to the new customer experience, plus prioritized several new initiatives for the coming year.

An early business outcome was the significant improvement in email open-rates and click-through rates as the direct result of more relevant, useful communication.

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Author: Kristine Remer

Kristine Remer is a CX insights leader, UX researcher, and strategist in Minneapolis. She helps organizations drive significant business outcomes by finding and solving customer problems. She never misses the Minnesota State Fair and loves dark chocolate mochas, kayaking, escape rooms, and planning elaborate treasure hunts for her children. View all posts by Kristine Remer

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UI/UX Case Study - Customer Service Portal

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    TOP 30 Case Studies of Digital Customer Experience in Banking Apps and Fintech 2023. This collection of the best UX case studies on creating and researching the customer experience in digital banking and Fintech apps. These articles are collected from Medium and arranged based on the amount of applause in 2023.

  14. UI/UX Case Study : Improving Customer Experience using Chatbots

    According to the latest research, the global chatbot market is expected to reach $1.23 billion by 2025. This rapid growth is because nearly half of consumers prefer communicating with chatbots for customer service inquiries and has prompted CMOs to ramp up the use of chatbots by 2020. Source.

  15. What are UX Case Studies?

    UX case studies are examples of design work which designers include in their portfolio. To give recruiters vital insights, designers tell compelling stories in text and images to show how they handled problems. Such narratives showcase designers' skills and ways of thinking and maximize their appeal as potential hires.

  16. 15 Excellent UX Case Studies Every Creative Should Read

    5. Perfect Recipes App by Tubik. Here we have a UX case study for designing a simple mobile app for cooking, recipes, and food shopping. It aims to step away from traditional recipe apps by creating something more universal for users who love cooking with extended functionality.

  17. Discovery Workshop: Customer Journey Map & Service Blueprint [UX Case

    The workshop had three parts: (1) Alignment Persona, so we could define target user, (2) Customer Journey Map, so we can empathize with what the persona goes through, and then the (3) Service Blueprint workshop, that maps out what our customers have to do in order to support the persona. Finally, a fourth layer is what our company has to do to ...

  18. UX/UI case study for Customer Service Portal

    Case Study Customer Service Portal Client: Ocean Insights. Challenge Intuitive Customer Service Portal for Container Shipment The aim of the project was to provide a lean user interface with all relevant shipment information of Ocean Insights clients for their customers. ... UX/UI Designer Sascha Lichtenstein — ...

  19. Designing a Chatbot Conversation: UX Design Process Case Study

    A case study documenting the design strategy and process used to architect and develop a conversational, chatbot experience for a mobile app startup — from ideation through visual design.

  20. 20+ Outstanding UX/UI Design Case Studies

    About. Discover an expertly curated collection of 20+ inspirational UX/UI design case studies that will empower you to create outstanding case studies for your own portfolio. Comprehensive end-to-end case studies covering research, ideation, design, testing, and conclusions. Perfect for designers building portfolios and looking for inspiration ...

  21. Customer Support

    Interaction Design,Product Design,UI/UX,Figma. View your notifications within Behance.

  22. UX Case Study: New Customer Onboarding Journey Map

    Review existing customer research. Receive product demos from product owners. Customer research activities: Conduct 3-month-long diary study with new customers, including multiple phone interviews with each participant. Communicate research findings to the project team throughout study. Analyze diaries and phone interview findings.

  23. UI/UX Case Study

    Art Direction,UI/UX,Web Design,Adobe Photoshop,Principle,Sketch App

  24. Zomato

    Introduction. Food is an integral part of the survival strategy that human civilization has inculcated to adapt and the 21st century folks have disrupted the way in which humans interact with their food. Digital transformation today is like the "World Wide Web" or Internet of the late 90's and tech-giants have learnt to not follow " re ...

  25. Generative AI Use Cases and Resources

    Streamline customer self-service processes and reduce operational costs by automating responses for customer service queries through generative AI-powered chatbots, voice bots, and virtual assistants. Learn more. Analyze unstructured customer feedback from surveys, website comments, and call transcripts to identify key topics, detect sentiment ...