How to Fund a UX Case Study Project With Fan Support

Funding a UX case study project means publishing a specific goal — for example, "user research and a redesign write-up for [app]" — and letting fans or peers contribute cash toward it, tracked on a progress bar. This differs from selling a review of someone else's product: here, a designer is raising money to produce their own case study.

FanBell is free to start with no monthly fee and applies a 12% platform fee only when a fan pays (pricing).

Portfolio-grade UX case studies carry cash costs, not only hours. User Interviews reports an average incentive of $80 per hour for remote moderated one-on-one B2C sessions across nearly 20,000 completed projects recruited on its platform (UX Research Incentives Report), so a single five-participant study starts around $400 in incentives before any of the designer's own time is counted. Project Support gives that work a price before it starts, instead of after.

A funded case study fits exactly one situation: a designer's own project. Getting paid to review someone else's app, screens, or portfolio is a Creator Service, not a funding goal.

What does it mean to "fund" a UX case study project?

Funding a UX case study means a designer publishes a named goal — research plus a redesign write-up for a specific product — and fans contribute cash toward a stated target tracked on a progress bar. Contributors support the designer's own project; they are not commissioning a deliverable for themselves or buying a shipped product.

On FanBell, Project Support tracks contributions against that goal with a visible progress bar, and the money is cash toward the project rather than payment for a product delivered to the contributor (how it works). The same mechanic works for other research-heavy work with a defined scope and end date — see how to fund a research effort like an open dataset release.

Why fund a case study instead of doing it unpaid?

Funding compensates the research and iteration hours a portfolio piece actually requires, instead of treating those hours as free marketing. Unpaid spec work still carries real costs: participant incentives, recruiting time, software, synthesis, and writing. A funding goal converts part of that cost into direct support from people who want the case study to exist.

Unpaid work is not worthless, and plenty of strong portfolios are built with no funding at all. The argument for a goal is narrower: when a project needs paid research participants, someone is already spending money, and a published goal decides in advance whether that someone is only the designer.

How much does a portfolio-grade case study cost to produce?

Cost is driven by participant incentives and research hours, not by software. Nielsen Norman Group recommends testing with five users because a first study of that size finds about 85% of a design's usability problems (Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users), which caps the research round at five sessions, one synthesis pass, and one redesign iteration.

"After the first study with five participants has found 85% of the usability problems, you will want to fix these problems in a redesign." — Nielsen Norman Group, "Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users"

Tooling is the small line. Figma's Professional plan lists a Full seat at $16 per month, and Figma's Starter plan is free (Figma pricing), so two months of paid tooling costs less than half of one participant incentive.

What does a realistic funding budget for a UX case study look like?

A realistic budget lists four things: participant incentives, tooling, the designer's own hours, and platform plus processing fees. The example below funds one five-participant study and a written case study, and lands on a published goal of $1,600 — an amount that nets roughly $1,340 after FanBell's 12% platform fee and card processing.

Show the arithmetic on the page itself. At a $25 average contribution a $1,600 goal is about 64 payments, and FanBell's 12% platform fee plus typical US online-card processing of 2.9% + $0.30 per charge (Stripe pricing) takes about $258, leaving roughly $1,342 against a $1,332 need. Because the $0.30 is charged per contribution rather than per goal, the same $1,600 raised in $10 contributions carries about $286 in fees instead of $258.

Moving the sessions in person raises the incentive line: User Interviews reports an average of $90 per hour for in-person moderated 1:1 B2C interviews, against $80 per hour remote (UX Research Incentives Report), which adds $50 to a five-participant round. Two lines in that budget are assumptions the designer sets rather than sourced figures — the recruiting buffer and the hourly rate — and labeling them that way on the page keeps the sourced numbers credible.

Should the case study be a Wishlist goal or ongoing Tips?

Use a funding goal when the case study is a defined project with a start and an end; use Tips when support is open-ended and tied to no deliverable. Wishlist / Project Support tracks a named goal on a progress bar, while Tips are one-time payments with no reply or delivery required.

A funding goal and a Creator Service can live on the same page, because they answer different requests: contributors fund the designer's project, while a Creator Service buyer pays for a deliverable made for them. The same either/or applies to other project-based creators — see, for example, how a maintainer funds an open source project instead of selling one-off support.

What should a case study funding page describe?

A funding page should name the product or problem under study, the research plan, the deliverable format, the target amount, the publish date, and how partial funding will be handled. Specific goals read as commitments; a vague line such as "fund my portfolio work" gives contributors nothing concrete to evaluate before they pay.

A reusable template for the page description, with the brackets filled in:

• Title: "Research + redesign case study: NAME OF PRODUCT OR FLOW".
• Scope: the one flow or problem the case study covers, and the reason it was chosen.
• Research plan: the number of participants, the method (moderated interviews, unmoderated tasks, a survey), and the incentive being paid to each participant.
• Deliverable: the exact artifact — a written case study, a Figma prototype, a video walkthrough, or a named combination of them.
• Timeline: a research window, a synthesis window, and a publish date.
• Update cadence: how often contributors hear from the designer, and through what channel — for example, a short written update when recruiting closes, when sessions finish, and when the draft is ready.
• Budget: what the target amount covers, broken out into incentives, tooling, time, and fees.
• Partial-funding plan: what happens at 50% and at 100% of the goal, stated before anyone pays.
• What contributors get: the published case study, credited or uncredited, and anything else being promised.

Filled in, that reads as a single short paragraph: "Research and redesign case study for a local food bank's donation flow. Five 60-minute moderated interviews with past donors, each paid an $80 incentive, run in October; synthesis and redesign in November; published as a written case study with a Figma prototype on 1 December. Updates when recruiting closes, when sessions finish, and when the draft is ready. Goal of $1,600 covers incentives, two months of Figma, 20 hours of work, and platform and card fees. At 50% funded I run three sessions instead of five and publish a shorter study; the publish date does not move either way."

FanBell's walkthrough for creating a Project Support goal covers the mechanics of publishing that description.

How do consent and research ethics apply to a funded case study?

Every research session needs informed consent before it starts. The UK Government Digital Service Service Manual states that participants must be told who is doing the research, its purpose, what data is collected, that participation is voluntary, and how long their data will be kept (Service Manual).

"You must keep evidence of the consent you get from each participant, and what they have consented to." — UK Government Digital Service, "Getting informed consent for user research", Service Manual

Funding adds one disclosure the baseline does not cover: participants should be told the study is funded by contributors and that the findings will be published. Nielsen Norman Group's research-ethics guidance stresses that ethics governs how participant data is used after a study ends, not only how the session is run — so anonymize quotes and recordings unless a participant agreed in writing to be identified.

Can a funded case study redesign a product the designer does not own?

Yes, but the case study must not imply the company endorsed or commissioned the work. Google's published brand guidance forbids third parties from using its brand elements in ways that suggest a relationship that does not exist, and comparable trademark rules are published by most companies a designer might redesign.

"Don't use the Google logo or any of our brand elements in any way that implies affiliation, endorsement, or sponsorship where such a relationship does not exist." — Google, Brand Resource Center guidance

The safe pattern for an unsolicited redesign follows from that rule: label the work as an independent concept, avoid reusing the company's logo inside redesigned screens, and read that company's own published brand or trademark guidelines before publishing. Naming the product being studied is descriptive use; dressing the work up as official is not.

Should a funded case study include an accessibility pass?

An accessibility pass is worth including because the problem is measurable and near-universal. The 2026 WebAIM Million report found that 95.9% of the one million most-visited home pages had detected WCAG 2 failures when analyzed in February 2026, up from 94.8% a year earlier.

The same WebAIM Million report recorded an average of 56.1 detected errors per home page and noted that, because only automatically detectable failures were counted, the true rate of full WCAG 2 A/AA conformance was certainly lower than 4.1%. The standard to test against is WCAG 2.2, published as a W3C Recommendation on 5 October 2023 with nine additional success criteria beyond WCAG 2.1 (WCAG 2.2 overview, W3C Web Accessibility Initiative).

An accessibility pass does not need to cover every WCAG success criterion to be worth including. Naming a bounded scope — keyboard navigation and color contrast on the core flow, for example — keeps the funded goal realistic while demonstrating a skill many portfolios skip.

How should the case study itself be scoped and presented?

One deeply documented project beats several shallow ones. Nielsen Norman Group's portfolio guidance recommends choosing three to five projects to present as detailed case studies rather than showing everything a designer has worked on. A funded goal should therefore cover one case study, scoped end to end.

Nielsen Norman Group states the rule plainly in that article: "Quality over quantity is the best rule to follow when putting together your portfolio,".

For a funded project, scoping one case study well means a clear problem statement, the research method, the key findings, the design iterations, and the outcome — rather than funding several at once. A finished case study is also the only version a contributor can actually see delivered.

What happens after a case study is funded, and what does FanBell charge?

Contributions are charged when a fan pays, not pledged and collected at a deadline, and FanBell takes a 12% platform fee on each paid contribution with no monthly fee. Card processing is separate. After funding, the designer runs the research, publishes the case study, and shares it with contributors.

The precise mechanics matter, because contributors will ask about them:

• When money moves: a project support contribution is a payment processed by Stripe at the moment the fan checks out, routed to the creator's connected Stripe account after platform and processing fees. A creator must finish Stripe onboarding before any of it can be paid out.
• No all-or-nothing cutoff: contributions already received are not automatically returned because a goal was not fully met, since Project Support does not run a deadline-and-refund model.
• Refunds: refunds may be available depending on payment status and platform, creator, or admin policy; when a payment is refunded the customer is refunded in full and FanBell returns its platform fee, while Stripe's processing fee on the original charge is generally retained by Stripe.
• What the creator owes: project support is tied to the creator's stated goal, and it is not a charitable donation unless the creator explicitly says so and qualifies that legally. In practice, the obligation is whatever the funding page promised — which is the argument for writing the partial-funding plan before publishing.
• No tiered rewards: there is no reward-tier structure and no physical fulfillment; contributors are funding a project, not buying an item.

Sharing progress along the way — a note when research wraps, a preview of early findings — keeps contributors informed before the case study is live. Once published, it can support a job search, attract clients for similar work, or stand on its own as a portfolio piece people paid to see made.

Frequently asked questions

Funding a case study is a Wishlist / Project Support goal for the designer's own project, charged when a fan pays rather than pledged, with a 12% platform fee on each contribution and card processing separate. Selling an audit of someone else's product is a Creator Service instead. The answers below cover the questions contributors ask most.

Is funding a case study the same as selling a UX audit?

No. Funding a case study means a designer raises money for their own research-and-redesign project through a Wishlist / Project Support goal. Selling a UX audit means a fan pays a Creator Service to review their own product. The audience and the deliverable differ in each case.

Does FanBell take a cut of case study contributions?

FanBell is free to start with no monthly fee and applies a 12% platform fee only when a fan contributes. Typical US online-card processing is separate at 2.9% + $0.30 per charge (Stripe pricing); rates differ for international cards, currency conversion, and other payment methods.

Are project support contributions charged immediately or only if the goal is met?

They are charged at checkout. A project support payment is processed by Stripe when the fan pays and is routed to the creator's connected Stripe account after platform and processing fees. There is no pledge-now-charge-later step and no all-or-nothing deadline.

Can a contribution be refunded?

Sometimes. Refunds may be available depending on payment status and platform, creator, or admin policy, and a refunded customer is refunded in full with FanBell returning its platform fee, while Stripe's processing fee on the original charge is generally retained by Stripe.

What do I owe contributors once a goal is funded?

Whatever the funding page promised. Project support is tied to the creator's specific stated goal rather than to a fixed reward structure, so the page description is the obligation — which is why the scope, deliverable, publish date, and partial-funding plan belong in it before the first contribution arrives.

What if the funding goal isn't fully reached?

Contributions already received are not returned simply because a goal was not fully met, since Project Support does not use an all-or-nothing funding cutoff. A designer should still state up front, in the page description, how a partially funded goal will be handled — for example, three research sessions instead of five, with the publish date unchanged.

Create your free FanBell page and turn the case study you'd otherwise build unpaid into a funded project.