DECISION STORYTELLING
The case study had the evidence.
The decisions were buried inside it.
Adam Ridges’ Pets at Home case study already contains strong research, thoughtful design work, and polished presentation. The problem is not weak work. The strongest thinking is sometimes spread across several sections, requiring the reader to connect research, principles, design responses, and reflection themselves.
Independent portfolio rewrite exercise based on Adam Ridges’ public Pets at Home case study. Adam was not a client and was not involved in this rewrite.
View Adam Ridges’ public Pets at Home case study →
Original headline: Simplifying product discovery for pet owners.
Proposed headline: Helping pet owners find the right product without fighting the catalogue.
The work didn’t change. The story did.
Here’s what I saw
The research was good. The hierarchy wasn’t.
Adam already had evidence worth showing. But methods, findings, principles, individual screens, validation, and reflection often receive similar narrative weight. That makes it harder to tell which ideas matter most.
Strong decisions were spread across the case study.
One finding may appear during research, become a principle later, and finally show up as a design improvement several sections afterward.
Those pieces belong together.
The ending became broader than the project.
The final reflection contains reasonable UX lessons, but the project has a more specific story about helping people make confident choices in a complicated shopping journey.
How I’d change the story
CURRENT STRUCTURE — 8 JOURNEY STAGES
01 Homepage
02 Navigation
03 Landing page
04 Product listing
05 Product details
06 Add to basket
07 Basket
08 Checkout
PROPOSED STRUCTURE — 5 STORY STAGES
Problem → Evidence → Decisions → Validation → Lesson
The screens stay. The story stops being organized around them.
The biggest change
One strong decision story was split across three parts of the case study.
The research already found the problem. The design principle already responded to it. The final interface already showed what Adam changed.
I would bring those pieces together. That one change makes the evidence easier to scan and gives the final interface a clear purpose.
Proposed rewrite
Turn filters into guidance, not another catalogue.
What the research showed
Shoppers were spending too much attention on navigation and filters before they could meaningfully compare products. With more than 100 filter options, people struggled to know which criteria actually mattered.
The decision
Treat filtering as decision support.
Instead of exposing every option equally, prioritize the criteria that help people choose, group related choices, and keep secondary complexity out of the way until it becomes useful.
What changed
The redesigned product listing brought common filters forward, grouped related options, and reduced how much information shoppers had to process at once.
The screen is evidence.
The decision is the story.
Two more quick examples
A clearer opening
The original opening introduces the project, methods, and intended improvements together. I would make the customer tension clear first.
Helping pet owners find the right product without fighting the catalogue.
Customers were not struggling with a lack of choice. They were struggling to find what fit their needs and know when they had made the right decision.
Adam used research and testing to redesign the journey from discovery through checkout around that problem.
A more specific ending
Designing confidence across a high-choice shopping journey
The biggest source of friction was not one screen. It was the uncertainty customers carried from discovery into comparison and purchase.
Navigation had to help people start in the right place. Filters had to guide rather than overwhelm. Product information had to answer the questions that made shoppers hesitate.
When uncertainty builds early, every later decision gets harder.
What I’d change. What I’d keep.
| Change | Keep |
|---|---|
| Repeated explanations | Strong research |
| Screen-by-screen narration | Real evidence |
| Ideas spread across multiple sections | Important iterations |
| Generic reflections | Adam’s reasoning |
| Equal weight on every part of the process | Strong visual work |
A good rewrite shouldn’t make your work sound like mine. It should make your thinking easier to see.
What the full paid Portfolio Rewrite can add
This is what I can see from the outside.
This independent exercise only uses what Adam chose to publish. No client interviews or direct collaboration with Adam occurred.
With a real client, I can investigate questions the public portfolio cannot answer:
- What did you actually own?
- What almost went wrong?
- What changed because of your decision?
- Which constraints shaped the solution?
- What are you trying to be hired to do next?
Those answers often contain the strongest parts of the story. This is what the paid process can add through direct client context and collaboration—not work completed with Adam.
Explore another transformation
Quentin Gillon — A design-system story became an organizational-change story. →
Amandeep Singh — Strong research became a clearer portfolio story. →
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