What is the design log?
The design log is a shared, transparent, source-of-truth for all updates, feedback and decisions made on a design project. We use the design log as a tool for documenting our design process.
What's it for?
The goal of the design log is to improve visibility and ultimately help frame the role of the designer as the person leading and driving the conversation around their work. The design log helps us stay aligned as a team, acts as a tool for capturing feedback, and makes it easier for the broader company to see what we're doing and collaborate with us.
Who's it for?
The Design team...your squad and collective...the whole company...and most importantly you! By documenting and sharing our work, everyone can benefit.
What are the benefits?
Visibility and transparency
👀 Visibility of our design process for our teams
The design log gives the teams we work with greater visibility of our design process, beyond the pixels we share on Slack, and exposing the thought process and decision making behind our designs
📸 Creates a snapshot of our design process over time
Documenting our process in a log format makes each update a snapshot of a project at that specific point in time. This means we have an audit trail, and it’s easy to refer back to decisions that were made, or old ideas that were discarded, etc.
👯♂️ Loops the rest of the design team into our work
Having greater visibility on our design work makes it easier to loop the rest of the design team, whether that’s for critique, collaborating or if another designer joins the company or picks up a project that’s already in progress
🌍 Sharing design work with the wider company
Having a design log also gives us a simple, ready-made format for sharing our design work with the wider company, so everyone can see the highlights of what we're working on and the impact design can have
💯 Aligns with company goals and values
Good documentation is one of our company values.
A single source of truth
🍱 A single place to find everything
It’s a single place for keeping track of your design work, so you don't have to dig through Slack or other places to find feedback
📚 A place to capture decisions and discard explorations
It’s a place where you can capture everything; your thought process, the decisions you made, the designs you explored and discarded
⏸ Allows you to pause a project and come back later
Having a single source of truth allows you to pause a project and come back to it at a later time without losing track of the work
🏎 Makes it easy to get up to speed on a project
The design log makes it easy to return to a project after a break (e.g. holiday or if a project gets paused), or if someone changes teams and needs to understand the history of a project
Increased rigour and standardised format
😌 Takes the effort out of starting a project
Having a standardised process in place means we don’t have to think of a structure and a home for our work whenever we start a new project
🔎 You know where to find things and what to expect
You know exactly where to find things and the format to expect it in if you, or anyone else, goes looking for design details about a project
🕵️♀️ Encourages rigour in the way we solve problems
Going through the process of documenting our designs and decisions encourages us to make sure we’ve really thought through the problem we’re solving
👫 Our way of documenting process, like other disciplines
This is our way to document process, in the same way that engineers have PRs. The design log gives us a standardised format for documenting work and feedback gathering like Github does for code reviews, and the benefits that brings
Better feedback
💬 Somewhere to gather and encourage feedback
Log entries become a place to gather and encourage feedback from your team-mates and anyone else you want to share it with
💎 Being asynchronous allows time for high quality feedback
The nature of a design log Notion page vs. a Slack thread means that feedback can be left asynchronously, allowing our team-mates time to give more considered, high quality feedback when they are able to
How does it work?
The design log is structured around 3 databases:
⚡️ Design Log
🏀 Design Projects
👩👧👦 Design Teams
You can think of the structure like a nested set of pages, where individual design log entries belong to a project, and projects belong to a team or squad.
As a designer, most of the time you'll just be creating new design log entries and associating them with an existing project (or creating a new project if one doesn't exist already). The design teams database contains a list of the currently active squads, and associates them with a collective and relevant projects. This database underpins the other 2, and is really just there to keep things organised and filterable.
How to create a new design log entry
Let's get started! When you have something you want to document or share for feedback, follow these steps to create a design log.
1️⃣ Create a new log entry
Head to the design log page and click the
New button in the top right corner to start a new log entry, and then give it a title. It's best to make the title specific to the content of the design log, rather using anything too broad, like a project name.2️⃣ Add yourself as the creator
Click on the
Created by property field and search for your name, then select it to add yourself. Adding this is helpful so other people know who is working on which piece of work, and if you (or anyone else) ever wants to filter design logs to find just the ones made by you.3️⃣ Associate it with a design project
Click the
Design project property field and either find an existing project in the list or search for one. Click the add icon on the one you want to add. If your project is new, you can enter it in the search box at the top of the dialog and create a new one.4️⃣ Write your design log
In the content area of the page, you can select the
What to write template if you want to see some tips for what to include in a design log. Write up your content and you're done!5️⃣ Share it!
Either grab the page URL from your browser, or use the
Share button in the top right of the page to share with specific people or use the Copy link button to grab a link.Setting up your own design log for your squad
Because the design log is powered by a database in Notion, you can embed that database wherever you like and filter it to only show the content you want. For example, you could embed a view of the design log database into a project page and filter it to only show design log entries made by you and associated with that project, or you could create your own design page in your squad's space in Notion and embed a view of the design log database with a filter to only show design logs associated with your squad. Here's how to do that:
1️⃣ Create your page and add a linked database
Once you've set up your own page (here I've created a design log page in the [Squad name] squad space in Notion) you can choose
Create linked database from the Add menu.2️⃣ Search for the Design Log database and add it
Search for 'design log' and it should come up as the top result. Click to add it.
3️⃣ Choose Filter from the more menu
Now that you have embed the design log database, you can filter it to show only the log entries you want to see. In the
More menu (3 dots) found at the top right of the table, click Filter.4️⃣ Add a new filter
Click the
Add a filter dropdown in the bottom left corner of the dialog and choose Add a filter.5️⃣ Set up your filters
You can now set as many filters as you'd like. Here I've set up a filter where
Squad must contain [Squad name], so the database will only show design log entries that are associated with the [squad name] squad.6️⃣ Customise your view
Once you've filtered the content, you can then play around with the sorting and choose which properties you want to appear in the table. These controls are also accessed from the
More menu.What to add to a project page
Design project pages are also a useful tool for summarising the goals of a project and providing any high level details and links to design files, resources etc. You can get to a project page from the properties section at the top of a design log (if the design log is associated with a project) or you can browse all projects in the Design Projects page.
In the content area of the project page, you can select the
What to write template if you want to see some ideas for what to include, and an automatically embedded view of the design log database (you'll need to filter this manually to only show design logs associated with the project).Tips for sharing your design logs and getting feedback
if you're looking for feedback on your work, or just sharing for visibility, here are some recommendations for where and how to share on Slack:
In #design-log
This channel is the design log's home on Slack, and is where you can find a stream of everyone's logs. The recommended approach is to post here every time you create a new design log, and include the project, the title of the design log, a link to the log, and a short summary to help others understand what it's all about.
In the future we'd love to find a way to automate this, so all new design logs get automatically shared to this channel, but for now there's no way to do this so we post manually.
In your project or squad's channel
When sharing with your team or in a project channel, a recommended approach is to link to your design log entry along with a small amount of explanation and context (maybe also a screenshot as a teaser). It's also useful to make it clear if you're looking for feedback, and specifically what you want feedback on, and remind people to leave feedback in your design log!
Common questions
This sounds like a lot of extra work, won't this slow me down?
Creating design log entries doesn’t need to feel like extra work, it should become a natural part of your workflow. Where you might currently create a design doc to write up some ideas, or share some pixels in a Slack thread for feedback, you can now use the design log to do just that. Ultimately, the design log should make your life easier in the long run, as you'll have an easy way to find and share your work.
What should I include in a design log, and how detailed should it be?
Design log entries don't need to be a novel! They can be as long or as short as you want them to be, whatever is most effective for what you want to document or share. Think about your audience, and what you want to get out of it. Are you just documenting a decision? Or do you want some feedback on something? They can be as simple as a screenshot, a flow chart, or a quick sentence.
How many design logs should I be producing per week/month?
There is no right or wrong answer! Design logs are not measured or judged, and there's no quota. Create design log entries when you think it will be useful for documenting process, getting feedback and capturing decisions 🙂
How big should a design project be?
A design project can be as big as you want it to be, but it's recommended to break projects into smaller chunks when possible. A good rule of thumb is to make a new design project for any piece of work that you see lasting from several weeks to several months, and has its own goals. You can normally create a design project to reflect whatever project you're working on in your squad.
I keep getting feedback in Slack, rather than in my design logs, what should I do?
If your teammates still give feedback in a Slack thread, it's fine to continue the conversation but politely ask them if they can pop their feedback on your log entry as well. It also helps to explain the benefits of the design log, and it should help to change behaviours over time. Slack is still fine for ad-hoc discussions!
What if I just want a quick gut-check on a design, do I need to write up a log entry?
Slack is still a great tool for this, and you can still use the #design-log channel or your project/squad channels for ad-hoc feedback and quick gut reactions. If you want more considered or detailed feedback though, this is where the design log can really shine! You could simply drop the designs in a design log with some brief explanation and share a link.
How does the design log extend to discipline work, such as the design system?
If you're making changes to our design system and the change is chunky enough to deserve some explanation, reasoning and feedback, then feel free to document it in a log entry. Log entries don't need to be just about your squad work, they can be about any design work you want to document.
I have a different process or format I'd like to use for my design documentation, can I use that instead?
We've found the design log format to be effective, and we've seen great feedback from the designers, engineers and PMs who use it. We'd love for all product designers to use this process so they can reap the benefits too. The design log is still a WIP though, and we should continue to develop and evolve it into something that works for everyone.
I don't seem to have permissions to create design logs, what's going on??
Only members of the design team can create new design logs. We decided to lock them down because the design log is a tool primarily for designers and we wanted to prevent mistaken edits when other folk are browsing and commenting.
If you're a new designer and need access to start writing design logs, please post in #design-log and ask for access, someone will be able to help!
If you're not a designer and need to be able to edit a specific design log, please ask the designer in your team if they can share the log with you with edit permissions, or post in #design-log with your request.