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Recently, I was working with a designer on his case studies.
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The work was solid and the case studies were structured well. But the outcomes section for an education platform was empty.
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I asked: “What happened after this launched?”
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He said: “It’s been adopted by over 1,000 educators globally.”
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He hadn’t included it because he didn’t think it counted.
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More than a thousand educators were using a platform he had helped design and that information was missing from his portfolio.
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I see this more times than you think: designers have evidence worth sharing but don’t recognize it as a result.

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Results are not only percentages

When designers think about outcomes they often picture conversion rates, NPS scores, or numbers on a dashboard someone else owns.
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Without access to those numbers they assume they have nothing to write.
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But there are other questions that are worth asking:
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Who used the work?
What did testing reveal?
What changed for the team?
Did the work influence a decision?
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Even if you don't have a clean business metric you may still have credible evidence of what happened.

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What counts as evidence

Adoption and usage

Who uses what you helped build, and where?

“The platform was adopted by over 1,000 educators globally” establishes reach. A tool adopted across three product teams establishes internal usage.

Be clear about your contribution. You don’t need to claim you personally caused the adoption to explain the scale of the work.
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User evidence

What did testing or feedback tell you?
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“Five out of six participants completed the task without assistance” is specific testing evidence.
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A user quote can also help explain what worked or what still needed improvement. Include the context rather than presenting one positive comment as proof of overall success.
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Team and strategic impact

Did your work change how others worked or what they decided to build?
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Maybe your research informed a roadmap change. Your design system became a shared resource. Your documentation helped the team approach discovery more consistently.
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They are more than worth including when you can explain what changed and how your work contributed.
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None of these require access to an analytics dashboard. All of them require something most designers skip: the conversation.
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Start with 5 questions

The missing details often surface through a conversation with a former colleague, a product partner, or someone who can help you revisit the work.

Pick one project you have been writing off as having “no results.”

Ask:

• What happened after this launched?
• Who uses it, and what do we know about that usage?
• What did users, stakeholders, or teammates say?
• Did anything change in the product, team, or organization?
• What evidence can I verify before including it?

Write down what comes up. It does not need to sound like a finished case study yet.

If the outcome is unknown say so. Explain what you learned, what remained unresolved, or what you would measure next.

The designer with the education platform did not need to invent an impressive result.

He needed to recognize and verify the evidence he already had.
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Finding and framing the results

The Mid-Level Case Study Playbook includes guidance on finding and framing outcomes when you don’t have clean metrics: what counts, how to write it, and how to make your contribution clear.

→ Get the Mid-Level Case Study Playbook — $39
PDF guide + Notion workspace.

Talk soon,
Anthony

P.S. The most common reaction I get after helping a designer find their results: "I can't believe I almost left that out." You probably have something worth including too. Go find it.​
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Anthony Faria
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