Last weekend, I sat down for office hours with one of my UX coaching clients.

She came in thinking her portfolio case studies didn’t show “enough impact.”

She didn’t have a before/after chart.

No shiny metrics.

No guarantees her research actually got implemented.

So she assumed she had no story to tell.

But here’s what we uncovered:

👉 She led user research to help a client validate an untested product idea.

👉 She uncovered 3 different user types the team didn’t even know existed.

👉 Her insights helped reframe the onboarding flow from a single gamified funnel to a tailored experience based on user type.

👉 That shift helped reduce confusion and drop-off—especially for experienced users who previously bounced right at the start.

She had plenty of value.

She just didn’t know how to tell it.

So we reframed it together:

Instead of:

“Helped test a gamification feature”

We wrote:

“Led rapid validation to identify user segments and reduce onboarding friction, increasing user clarity for new community members.”

We went even further:

We quantified it.

She helped save an estimated $22,500 in productivity time annually

…from a single onboarding redesign.

All based on:

• time saved per user

• average hourly cost

• number of weekly onboarded employees

Simple math.

Grounded assumptions.

Real impact.

And this is the part most UX jobseekers miss:

You don’t need launch results to show value.

You need clarity on what changed—and why it matters.

If your research helped someone make a smarter decision, that’s impact.

If your onboarding saved users 2 hours of confusion, that’s value.

If your work increased understanding—even before implementation—you’ve made a difference.

You don’t need permission to tell the story.

You just need the courage to start owning it.

Sometimes, we don’t need more data.

We just need someone to say,

“That was useful. That was real. That counts.”

—Joseph

P.S. If this helped shift your thinking, feel free to reply and tell me what your version of “impact” might look like. No numbers required.