How To Present Your Experiment When You Don’t Have Results

Experiments don’t always go as planned and people commonly find themselves in situations where results take longer than expected. People often worry about how to present their work during a presentation, or at a conference, if they don’t have any data to show. Since people never know how an experiment will pan out, it’s important to feel confident sharing your project, even if you’re still working on it.

That’s why I’ve provided examples of phrases you can use below.

If you have no data yet, you could say:
We just started collecting data, and I’m looking forward to seeing the results.

We are in the process of analyzing the results and I look forward to sharing our findings with you soon.

We are about to run the experiment and I’ll be keeping an eye out to see if our hypothesis is correct.

If you have preliminary data you could say:
We are in the early stages of gathering data and at this point I’ve been seeing…

We just started to get our data back and what’s popped out at me so far is…

Since this is preliminary data the overall themes and takeaways may change, but so far I’m seeing…

Many projects take longer than expected and it’s fine if you don’t have data or results to share. Just make sure you don’t end your presentation on that note. Instead, I recommend ending with the big picture. That way people leave your presentation thinking about the importance of your work and they can look forward to hearing what you find out next.