Writing Case Studies Using
the Reader-Centered Approach
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Anticipate Your Reader's Questions
A case study should answer specific questions that your reader may have about your product or service. As an example, say you are writing a case study for a network software product. The reader may have the following questions:
- How is this software product installed on a company network?
- How will the features of this software help our employees to do their jobs better?
- What kinds of benefits can we expect from using this software product?
You can easily adapt these questions into an "interview questionnaire," to use when you interview the people at the client company that is the subject of the case study. For example:
- How was the software deployed on your company's network?
- In what ways did your employees use the specific features of the software? What tasks or goals did they accomplish through the software?
- What benefits did your company experience from using the software? (Increased productivity? Faster time-to-market? Etc.)
Tell Them A Story
The information in a case study should not be a bland listing of facts and bullet points. The reader is looking to see how your products or services work in a "real world" scenario. Therefore, as you write the case study, you want to tell the reader a story.
The trick here is to keep the story focused on the client company. You want to focus not on the various features of your products or services, but on how those features were used to the client's benefit. How were the features employed to help the client company achieve their goals? What tangible benefits did the client company receive as a result?
Describe how individual people or departments at the client company made use of your solutions. Use real names if you can; or, if not, use titles like "the Director of Product Management." The more personal you make the case study, the more readers will begin to trust that your solutions can help their company as well.
Organize for Maximum Effect
Organize the information in your case study into sections according to a basic template. This allows you to present the information in a logical format, so that the reader can follow the story and understand how your solution worked.
Use headings and sub-headings to guide the reader through the various sections. The template I use for a case study is:
- Company Overview -- A short description of the client company.
- The Challenge -- The problems that the client company faced before they employed your company's products or services.
- The Solution -- The product or service solutions that your company provided to the client company.
- Key Benefits -- The key benefits that the client company received by implementing your solutions.
The final section, "Key Benefits," should be divided up into four or five sub-sections, with one or two paragraphs each that examine each benefit. Examples of the sub-sections for "Key Benefits" might include:
- Increased Productivity
- Lower Production Costs
- Easy Tracking of Production Data
- Faster Time-To-Market