Case notes
The first case notes are still being written.
A case note is slower and longer than a field note. It takes one piece of work I actually did and walks through it end to end, with every identifying detail removed. None are published yet. This page says what will be in them so you can decide whether it is worth returning for.
01 / The format
Four parts, in the same order, every time.
A field note argues a point. A case note does something narrower and harder. It follows one problem from the day it landed to the day it stopped being urgent, and it stays in the order things actually happened rather than the order that makes the writer look competent.
The structure does not vary. Holding the same four parts every time is what stops a note drifting into a story about how well it went. Three of the parts are comfortable to write. The fourth is not, and it is the reason the format exists.
The problem as it actually presented
Not the tidy version assembled afterwards. What was visible in the first week, what everyone believed was wrong, and what turned out to be wrong instead.
What I built
The design and the decisions inside it. The constraints it had to survive, the options I considered and put down, and the reason I put them down.
What changed
How the work behaved once ordinary people used it in an ordinary week. Where it held, where it needed a second version, and what it never fixed.
What I would do differently
Every note has this section, because every piece of work has something in it worth admitting. A note without this part is an advertisement.
02 / What a case note leaves out
Anonymous by construction, not by editing afterwards.
Three rules decide what survives into a published note:
- 01Outcomes are described qualitatively. What improved, what got worse, what stayed stubborn. Never a figure taken from an internal system.
- 02No employer, client, brand, colleague, doctor, clinic or location appears, in any form a reader could resolve.
- 03If removing the identifying detail leaves nothing worth reading, the note does not get written.
That third rule is why this page is empty rather than padded. A method that only makes sense with the real names attached was never a method. It was a story.
Meanwhile, the topic hubs