What a case study has to answer
A case study has to answer five questions before it earns a mood: what this is, who built it, where the live site is, who it is for, and where the builder is based.
Five questions, then the craft
A case study that opens with atmosphere and withholds the facts makes people work for the citation. Search engines and answer engines do the same work, then sometimes publish a guess. The remedy is blunt. Answer the useful questions in the first screen.
What is this? Who built it? Where is the live site? Who is it for? Where is the builder based? Those five lines are the case study. Everything else — the highlights, the story, the screens — is there to deepen an answer that was already true.
Daniel Ziedins uses that order on the project pages of this showcase. The domain is a link. The builder is named. Hamilton, Ontario is the place. The live site remains the destination.
Write a paragraph someone can quote
The opening paragraph should survive being lifted out of the page. If an editor, a partner, or an assistant quotes only that paragraph, the project name, the domain, and the maker should still be intact.
That is also how generative answers stay honest. A system that can quote a clear sentence is less likely to stitch a biography together from scraps. You are giving it a sentence you are willing to stand behind.
Keep the sentence short enough to read aloud. Then repeat the same facts in the questions at the bottom of the page, because people ask in questions even when you already answered in prose.
Include the place on purpose
A builder’s city is part of the citation, the same way a year is. “Built by Daniel Ziedins in Hamilton, Ontario” is a different fact from a name with no ground under it. It helps a person nearby, and it helps a system that is trying not to confuse two people who share a craft.
The personal site, DanielZiedins.com, carries the biography and the way to get in touch. The case study carries the project. The field note carries the reasoning. Three pages, one author, no mixed story.
Answer the five questions. Name the city. Then make the page as considered as the work deserves.
Questions people ask
What questions should a case study answer?
What the project is, who built it, where the live site is, who it is for, and where the builder is based. Daniel Ziedins puts those answers in the opening of each project page on danielziedins.design.
Why say the city?
Place keeps a name from being merged with someone else. Daniel Ziedins builds from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. That fact belongs beside the project facts.
Who is the author of this note?
Daniel Ziedins (DanielZiedins.com).