How to talk about your impact when an NDA says you can’t

Hey, Miranda here 👋

In this article:

• Why “intent” is rarely the thing your NDA is protecting

• The percentage trick that tells the whole story without naming a single confidential figure

• What to say when even percentages are off the table

• What to do when you never had the data to begin with

You know the drill... blur the logo. Fake the client name. Password protect the case study like you’re running a speakeasy.

Fine. Standard. Nobody blinks at a redacted info line in the hiring process.

NDAs are a thorn in every designer’s side, and it is ridiculous... What’s a competitor going to do with your case study? What’s a shareholder going to do with “reduced checkout abandonment,” assuming they ever find it… which they won’t, because nobody outside your mom reads design portfolios for fun.

Still real legally though. Still your career on the line if you guess wrong. So you take it seriously and roll your eyes at the same time.

NDAs are mostly dumb. Your career isn’t.

So, you can nail the visual stuff, but what happens when someone asks, “So what change did your designs create?”

Are you allowed to say it saved the company $40 million? Can you say anything, or will legal march you straight to the guillotine?

It’s not as complicated as it feels at 11pm (still annoying though). Let’s get into it.

State the intended impact IN your case study title. I’m serious…

Not “dashboard redesign.” Try: “Creating an Intuitive Dashboard for Financial Analysts to Reduce User Error”

Intent is rarely the thing your NDA is protecting. Check your terms, but most agreements don’t care that you wanted to fix something.

This buys you a complete sentence before you’ve shared a single protected detail. Everything after it, even the bits you can’t quantify, now reads as a finished thought instead of a redaction.

You have a real number. No idea if you can say it.

Default to a percentage. Significance is relative. A percentage gives a hiring manager that without handing over anything specific.

20% could be 20 people or 20 million dollars. Nobody outside the company can tell. That’s the trick.

“Reduced checkout abandonment by 18%” is a complete sentence. It doesn’t need a dollar sign standing behind it to prove anything.

Some NDAs won’t let a percentage through either. Fallback that survives almost anything: