Article
Showing confidential work without breaking an NDA
You cannot show everything, and you do not have to. Ways to present confidential work: ask permission, lead with role and process, redact, recreate, or keep it for the interview.
Some of the best work you have done sits behind a non-disclosure agreement. Designers at leading AI companies face this constantly, and a few patterns have emerged for showing the thinking without leaking the product.
Ask first
Many agreements allow disclosure with written approval. Ask what is allowed: abandoned concepts, test results, public-facing screens. Companies are often more comfortable with percentages than raw figures.
Lead with your role and process
Describe the team, your part in it, the problem, the approach, and what you learned. A clear story with limited visuals still shows how you think.
Show method, not product
Share early sketches, black-and-white wireframes or workshop outputs. Or redact names and recreate the design in a different style, so the brand and colours are not recognisable.
Isolate your contribution
Show a single component you designed, apart from the recognisable finished product. Agreements usually protect the finished whole more than the generic craft inside it.
Use what is already public
Screens in a public product or marketing can often be shown. Use the product as a customer and see what you can reuse.
Save the detail for the room
Talk through confidential work in interviews, or use a private, password-protected page with a clear note. And check the end date: some agreements expire, and then the work becomes showable.
- UX Design
- Product Design