What is a Case Study?

Case Studies describe critical incidents of practice, highlighting key design challenges and possible solutions. A case study is a detailed description of an actual event highlighting a problem / issue / desired function in a well-defined context, and an attempt to address it. Case studies are fairly free-form narratives, with a lightweight "S.T.A.R.R" structure distinguishing:

• Situation (or Context): when and where did the event occur, what where the social, technological and organizational settings.
• Task: What were the aims, the problem to solve or the intended effect.
• Actions: What was done to accomplish the task.
• Results: Was the aim achieved? If not, why? Did you make any adjustments?
• Reflections: What did you learn?

How do I write a case study?

The technical bits, Step by step

• Browse the existing case studies
• Some older case studies are available as slidesets at: http://www.slideshare.net/tag/planetcasestudy
• See somr more case study examples at the Learning Patterns site.

Help topics

• Creating a new case study
• Editing an existing case study
• Embedding a slideset
• Adding media (graphics, diagrams, screenshots)