How do I write a UX case study when all my projects are practice projects?
Treat the practice project like a real one: state the problem you chose and why, show the constraints you set yourself, show real user input even if it was five friends, and end with what you'd do next. Hiring managers forgive a fake client. They don't forgive a case study with no thinking in it.
Two practice projects done to a high standard beat six shallow ones. Pick the two that best match the roles you want, and rewrite them as if you were presenting to a design lead: what was the goal, what did you learn from users, what did you decide, what would you change.
If you can, replace one practice project with a small real one: a nonprofit, a local business, a friend's side project. One real constraint changes how the whole portfolio reads.
From Hop mentors who've been there
“Laid off and got a job less than 4 months! I can share my journey if you need a help from layoff!”
Chuck Shin · Senior Product Designer at Microsoft AI · on their Hop profile
“I went from running my own thing for a decade to the advertising industry and from agency into in-house product design within fintech, and I've done everything in between.”
Craig Jamieson · Creative Advisor at CR—G · on their Hop profile
“When the 2020 pandemic killed my plan to move into front-end dev, I was working retail with some self-taught UI skills and no design degree. I bet on a UX certificate and spent almost two years getting rejected before landing my first role in 2023. What I took from it: your "unrelated" background isn't the liability you think it is. The years I spent reading people across a sales counter and walking them through setting up their mobile devices turned out to be user research and usability tests that I didn't even know I was doing. I can help you find and name those transferable threads instead of hiding them.”
Stephen Carroll-Keene · Product Designer at EverDriven · on their Hop profile
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