Guide To Writing an Effective Case Study

[NIadmin]

Tips

1. Be specific
2. Use Concrete examples, data, and tangible results to make your points.
3. Explain the “why” and “so what” whenever possible.

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Content

Title: 60 characters

Challenge: 15–40 words about what the challenge was

EXAMPLE: “Determining the source of electrical high-voltage transients to prevent light-rail car failure.”

Solution: 15–40 words about how you solved the challenge using NI products

EXAMPLE: “Combining the benefits of the NI CompactRIO FPGAs and processor to create a rugged, semipermanent monitoring system that records multiple data formats and rates, synchronizes data, and performs real-time analysis to remotely monitor sensors for extended durations.”

Body Copy: 1,200–1,700 words

The following outline is meant to serve as guidance for writing a compelling case study, and the questions/bullets are simply intended to help you hit important points. You do not need to address each bullet. Not all of the bullets will be applicable to everyone. Please make this your own. We want to hear your story about your application.

Please include subheads (not Part I-IV) to help with the flow of your case study.

Part I

• Introduce your company (who you are, what you do, who you serve, are you an NI Alliance Partner).
• Describe your challenge in more detail.
• Why was it so important to address your challenge?
• What tools/methods did you use for your solution before NI products?
• Why did you decide to make the switch to NI products?

Part II

• Describe your application and how it works.
• Which NI products you are using in your application (software and hardware)?
• Provide details about what each NI product is doing in your solution.
• Explain why you chose NI technology to develop your solution over other options?
• Did you leverage the expansive NI ecosystem in the design, development, and/or deployment of your solution? If so, what were the benefits?
  • The NI ecosystem includes NI technology partners and Alliance Partners, NI Community members, NI employees, NI employee groups, etc.
• Did you leverage Hardware Services to improve overall maintenance? If so, what were the benefits?
• Did you leverage NI Technical Support for development assistance or resolving issues? If so, what were the benefits?
• Did you leverage NI Training to build proficiency with the NI platform? If so, what were the benefits?
• How is your solution better because of NI?

Part III

• Explain the benefits, preferably quantifiable benefits, of your solution and how NI products helped you achieve them. Why are these benefits important?
• What is the impact of your application? This could be an impact on your business, your customers’ business, society, an industry, etc.
• Why is this application significant? Was it the first of its kind?

Part IV

•  What's next?

Contact Information

If there are multiple authors for a case study, please choose one person to list as the primary author, and provide contact information to be published on ni.com. You do not have to provide any contact information you are not comfortable having published.

• Physical address
• Email address
• Phone number
• NI Community profile information
• Company website

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Additional Materials

Please provide imagery, video, code, and/or supplemental technical documents to accompany your case study.

Imagery

Please provide at least one high-resolution (at least 300 dpi) photo/image with a caption. The image(s) that
accompany your paper should meet the following standards:

1. Photos
   a) Submit the original high-res photo file
       i. Shot on a camera (no camera phones, please!)
   b) Make the space “picture perfect”
       i. Clear the environment of trash, stray hardware, random cables, etc.
   c) Shoot with enough light or use the flash
   d) Shoot from a variety of angles
   e) Include people, if applicable, to add context to the shot
2. Illustrations
   a) Line art or vector illustrations should be provided in the EPS format, RGB
3. Screen Captures
   a) Screen captures or print screens should follow our screen capture guidelines.

Videos

• Videos should be five minutes or less in length
• Resolution should be 640 X 480 or higher
• 300 kbps video should be rendered at 15 fps or higher
• Audio should be mono 32 bit or higher
• Videos should be deinterlaced, if possible