Using a work journal to create design case studies - Tanner Christensen's blog

Last updated Apr 7, 2023

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Keeping a work journal is one of the best things you can do for personal development. ⤴️

Anything from setting and evaluating common goals for yourself or capturing a message about a challenging interaction with a co-worker are great uses of a work journal. ⤴️

Within each work journal, I have multiple project journals: dedicated pages for every defined project at the company. ⤴️

Metadata: Project name Project start date Last updated date Completed: yes/no Project version (is this a 1.0 project or something like 1.1 or even 2.0?) Project status (Draft, In progress, Scrapped, Completed) Contributors Informed ⤴️

Metadata: Project name Project start date Last updated date Completed: yes/no Project version (is this a 1.0 project or something like 1.1 or even 2.0?) Project status (Draft, In progress, Scrapped, Completed) Contributors Informed Outline: Project summary, in my own words Project goals and key results, again, in my own words Daily notes Learnings and outcomes ⤴️

I have 15 minutes on my calendar for heads-down time to reflect on the day and journal what got done. ⤴️

You don’t need to capture everything that happened for a project; you only should note what you think matters most for you, your personal development, and your learning. ⤴️

A great case study format to extract from a journal looks something like this: Where did the project start, and how were its goals defined? Did your manager tell you about the project, or did you kick it off with a team? Was the project hand-delivered to you as an assignment, or was it something you figured out? What was your first interaction with the project, and how did you feel going into it? Were you intimated or excited? Eager or annoyed? Why? What was the first thing you did? Not the first thing the team did, but what did you do once you learned about the project? Did you schedule meetings with stakeholders, look through past research, write down everything you knew about the work to come, or something else? What was the first (or second) challenge you encountered? How did you feel? What did you do to work through the challenge with others? How did the project typically progress? Did you need to rally the team together regularly, were regular meetings booked by a product manager for you, or did you set up consistent design critiques for the team to give you feedback? Did you do research, and if so, who scheduled it? How did all of that work feel for you? Were there any notable challenges you faced during the project? Call these out! Was there a disagreement between you and someone else? Was there a time you dropped something or failed to meet expectations? How did you recover from those things? Where did the project end up? What, if anything, would you have done differently? ⤴️

A project or work journal can help remind you of the ways you are growing and give you a great set of fieldnotes to pull from when it comes time to talk about that work in the future. ⤴️