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For many product teams, design documentation is an afterthought. Instead, they follow the approach of, “We don’t have time to do it right now. Let’s focus on the design or development.” They postpone writing documentation until the very end of the product design process.
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This can be a dangerous approach. A lack of thorough documentation causes confusion during the implementation phase of a design. Product teams are better off creating documentation throughout their workflow, essentially streamlining and empowering decision making. This will give everyone on the team a better understanding of each decision, every step of the way.
Let’s take a look at the concept of design documentation, explore why it’s an important investment of time, and go over some practical tips on how documenting design can be done properly.
What is design documentation?
Design documentation is a collection of documents and resources that covers all aspects of your product design. Documentation should include information about users, product features, and project deadlines; all essential implementation details; and design decisions that your team and stakeholders have agreed on.
Why invest in documentation design?
Clarify project requirements
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Gaining stakeholder approval to begin implementing a design is one of the most important steps in the design process. You need to be on the same page with stakeholders to gain this approval. Proper documentation makes it easier to achieve this goal. How? Documentation helps you organize and deliver your thoughts to stakeholders, which in turn helps them understand how your design decisions will satisfy the user needs and their own business objectives.
Streamline design implementation
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By documenting a design, you also aid in the implementation of it. Product design is a collaborative process, and in many cases, multiple people work on the project. It’s not always possible to share implementation details verbally (for example, when you work with remote teams). Thus, the design documents act as a single source of truth for everyone who is involved in product development and can rally your team around a specific goal.
Motivate your team
Good documentation tells a high-level story about the product and gets team members excited about the vision. It answers the questions, “How do we want to build this?” and, importantly, “Why do we want to build this?”
A list of essential docs
While documentation can vary from project to project, the following docs will be relevant to all. This information can be included in a single document or separated into multiple documents. Which approach you take will depend on the complexity of your project.
- Project overview – This document contains a high-level overview of the design and the goals the design team wants to accomplish. By reading this document, anyone should be able to understand the purpose of a project.
- Product requirements – This document covers the business and technical requirements of the design. It should be shared with stakeholders before starting the design to ensure that both types of requirements are satisfied. It’s also worth including in this doc information about constraints and assumptions because they will influence the design decisions.
- Project deliverables – This document provides information about the design artifacts established during the wireframing and prototyping phases (e.g., lo-fi wireframes, mock-ups, hi-fi prototypes) that will be provided as deliverables once implementation has been completed.
- Target audience information – This document lists relevant information about your audience, from user personas to data from user research. This information will help your team understand who your users are and what good design means to them (via their functional and aesthetic preferences). The doc serves as a reference for designers when sharing their rationale behind individual design decisions.
- User journeys – This document outlines the path a user may take to reach their goal when using a product.
- Design guidelines – This document describes the components and specifications required to build the solution.
- Style guides – This document lists a set of standards for the stylization of design. Styles, colors, and typefaces are essential pieces of this guide.
- Project scope and implementation plan – This document describes the roles and flow of cross-team collaboration. The implementation plan documents the requirements necessary to complete the implementation of the design. For simple projects, it might be a high-level overview of the steps required to complete the implementation. For complex projects, it can include a project timeline with information about the time required to complete each of the steps.
- Design validation and user testing – This document provides an overview of the practices to be executed during the product design cycle, as well as steps to be taken after product release to verify that the product satisfies user needs.
- Operational instructions – This document provides detailed instructions on how to perform common operational tasks after the design is implemented. For example, it can provide step-by-step instructions on how to roll out a new version of an app in the production environment.
Properly documenting design
Though there’s no single way to conduct design documentation, and it varies by product team, there are a few general recommendations that can benefit every project.
Make documentation usable for the target audience
It’s possible to identify three large groups of users for documentation: product team members, stakeholders, and end users. Every group has its own needs, and it’s important to consider this fact when working on your docs. Both the content of and the format for documentation should be adapted to suit your target audience.
Provide up-to-date documentation
Introduce a version control framework to keep your documentation up-to-date and therefore minimize the risk of incorrect design decisions. UX managers should validate the documentation at least once a month. Goodway driver.
Work on design documentation incrementally
Documentation design isn’t a one-and-done activity. In many cases, it’s impossible to create all the docs in one attempt. Thus, product teams should work on documentation as they go through the project. Documentation should be a “living” project that is constantly updated as you work on the design. Product teams should invest time in creating a flexible, accessible structure—anyone from a team should be able to update documentation rather effortlessly.
Test documentation
Documentation is a by-product of your product design, and like other products, it should be tested with users. Ensure that users know how to use it and find the documentation valuable. You can also introduce a simple feedback loop, such as an online response form, so your users can record their reactions and help you continuously improve your documentation.
Avoid jargon
Every field has its own special language. When used in an appropriate context, this special language helps you communicate precisely with specialists that have the required expertise. But when you are uncertain about the expertise of your target audience, minimize the use of technical language in your documents.
The best documentation is the kind that your target audience can easily understand. It’s important to learn what’s appropriate for your audience and leave out jargon if it can be replaced by more familiar terms. Try reading the text out loud and evaluating it from the perspective of your documentation readers. Note any terms that might cause confusion and replace them with clearer terms.
Create easy access
Static paper-based documentation is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Modern documentation should be provided as an online resource. This format not only makes it easier for users to access the documentation, but it also simplifies the procedure for updates. Prioritize sections with information, and make sure search works fine. The structure you choose should follow the pattern that users follow when browsing the documentation.
Provide visual or code samples in the doc
It’s much easier to use information when you can match it with an actual design. To create contextual hierarchies and improve comprehension, documentation should include visual design and code snippets, not just plain words. Visual design or code samples make it easier for users to translate the information into design decisions.
Update documentation automatically
If some part of the design goes undocumented, it doesn’t exist. If elements of the design system go undocumented, you run the risk of duplicating elements. Try to keep documentation up-to-date with your product’s code by automating documentation. Rules and systems should be in place for documentation to be updated as soon as developers introduce a change in the front-end design. This includes both visual references and code samples.
Find patterns in existing docs and turn them into templates
Once you have created the documentation for a few projects, review the docs and try to identify common aspects of all the projects. Define templates for the standard parts to aid in the creation of design documentation. Templates will also serve as a foundation for building out design documents for your future projects.
Conclusion
Creating design documentation is an important step in the project design process and has a direct impact on the outcome. The best design documentation gives a product team a framework for making design decisions. No matter how tight your deadlines for creating a design, you should never overlook the documentation process.
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On the day that Illustrator on the iPad launched, it immediately hit #1 on the U.S. and Japanese App Stores, had a 4.6 star rating, and was well-reviewed by many widestream publications. The initial success of this app was by design, not by chance. A useful Beta program enabled the team to design and implement successfully, and perhaps most importantly, our users felt invested, included, and involved in creating the future of the Illustrator ecosystem. In the words of one Beta participant, “I’ve participated in quite a few beta programs and the Slack channel community here is awesome, I’m so glad to be a part of the community…Love pushing Illustrator for iPad to its limits, making the experience intuitive. Thanks so much!”
Beta programs are used to gather feedback on products or services during the development cycle in order to make improvements before launching. They come in once the product is developed enough for target users to complete one or more key workflows from end to end, in order to gather some understanding of what the real world experience will be. In the software development world, Beta testing is common, but varies greatly in terms of focus and form. Over the years at Adobe, we’ve been working through trial and error to develop a set of beta best practices. We believe we’ve hit upon a successful set of 10 key themes that can be a powerful tool for helping any team launch a successful product. Below, we’ll dive into those topics and provide some more information about how to implement them in your own beta program.
10 steps for a useful beta
1. Pick a goal.
This may seem obvious, but as a team, you need to be aligned on a goal for your beta program. This goal will provide a clearly-defined priority when making smaller-scale decisions, such as who to invite to the program or what type of virtual events to host. Vso software others driver download for windows.
If the primary goal that your team aligns upon is marketing and engagement, it will be harder to glean feedback to refine the experience design and product development strategy. Beta programs that prioritize marketing, for example, may over-index on participants that are social media influencers, hoping that those influencers will promote the product to their followers. In that case, the relationship between the product team and the beta cohort will likely be more biased towards pleasing the users than getting actionable product feedback. With influencers in the program, the team will be less likely to investigate challenge areas, share the areas they’re looking for feedback on, or welcome negative feedback. Similarly, if the beta is focused on tutorials that highlight how amazing the technology is, the users will be deterred from providing raw, unbiased feedback – which would be more representative of how real-world users will respond when the app is launched.
If your team’s goal is to glean actionable feedback to help refine the users’ experience, then this article is for you! Harvesting useful product feedback will benefit the whole team; designers will get helpful feedback on the app’s UX, engineers will find bugs that help them strengthen their code, marketing will develop an invested community, and product managers can adjust the feature set and future roadmap according to users’ needs.
2. Create a community.
Users want to feel listened to. Foster a community and keep it engaged, encouraged, and welcomed. Ensure that each person in the community feels heard by fielding issues, questions, and logistical requests to the right cross-functional team member so users can hear from the correct “expert” on any given topic. If users stop getting responses to their thoughtful questions or helpful feedback, they’ll stop communicating. Encourage engagement by setting up fun Easter eggs like surprise giveaways, engaging design challenges, and helpful workshops. From a logistics perspective, make sure the entire cross-functional team has some responsibility in answering questions and following up on user feedback. In this way, the burden of engagement will not fall on a single team member, and the team’s ability to engage can be maximized.
As far as the community platform, we’ve been using Slack. Online forums specific to your company are less likely to garner constant interaction and engagement– simply because the users won’t be used to communicating in that context. What’s most important is meeting users where they’re at: we found that many of our users were using Slack to communicate with clients and collaborators on a daily basis, so that integration worked for us. By all means, find the places where your users already congregate and investigate those platforms as potential community hosts. It is also important to be confident that the platform offers security and privacy for your users.
No matter your platform, it’s important to host separate communities if you will have two or more different user types in your Beta. This will make it easier to contextualize the findings, and it will be a better experience for your Beta participants. We learned this the hard way: in one Beta, we had included both students and professionals. We quickly realized that the students were intimidated by the professionals, and they felt excluded from the conversation. In Slack, this meant that we needed to develop separate identical workspaces (not just channels).
3. Be user-centered.
Ideally, the whole cross-functional team will be talking to users. Make sure all are prepared! There are certain best practices to be aware of when speaking directly with users (we won’t cover all of them here). For one, users will have a bias towards pleasing you as the moderator. Following the guidelines in this article will help reduce that bias and give space for the participant to express themselves and provide crucial information.
Remember that it is alright for participants to struggle a bit (which gives us insight into what we need to fix), and for us to not provide the answer – instead, all team members should be listening for the “why.” For example, if a user says, “Hey, I want x feature,” don’t respond by saying, “That’s not on our roadmap.” Instead, ask why they want that feature – what would they use it to do? When would they use it? Where would they expect to find it? This can be much more insightful – it will give the design team a better sense of expected entry points; it will provide clarity to Product Management about what features certain workflows require; and it might even show that the user’s problem could be addressed by a different feature that accomplishes the same goal.
4. Carefully screen the participants.
The big question that arises when a team sets out to start a beta is always: who will be invited to participate? It’s important to clearly define the criteria of whom you would like to include in the beta. These users will shape the future of the application, so it’s important to ensure that they reflect the attributes of the target user. This can include variables like profession, tool use, workflow, needs, and goals. Work with a researcher to devise questions for a screener survey that cover all of the criteria that you decide on, and only invite users that match those criteria according to their completed screener survey.
While you’re at it, the screener survey is a terrific opportunity to collect other helpful data, so don’t limit yourself to asking only about the aforementioned user criteria. While the main priority of the screener is to select users to participate (or not) in the beta program, it can also be useful for other reasons. For instance, a screener can be used as a survey of the population that’s interested in your product, providing insights into which user populations might be most intrigued by the product as it’s been marketed. Additionally, the screener is a great place to harvest additional insights on those who do end up in the beta program. This user information can later be triangulated with the feedback that the user provides; for example, information about what device a user is running, how experienced they are with similar products, and what other technology they use can inform the interpretation of their qualitative feedback.
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As you’re building your beta audience, be sure to give thought to equity and inclusion. After all, we live in a pluralistic – rather than a monolithic – society, and your product’s ultimate users will be reflective of that. Be sure to create an inclusive space for people of varying backgrounds, sexual orientations, genders,body types, and physical, mental, and sensory abilities. Gathering diverse perspectives can help the team better understand and empathize with issues faced by a range of users, enabling them to solve such issues ahead of launching the product. If you’d like more tips, you can check out the Adobe Design Inclusive Workshop, or other Adobe Design inclusive resources. For more details on best practices for recruiting, communicating with, accommodating, and engaging users with a range of abilities, our team will soon be sharing an Inclusive Research Best Practices guide.
5. Rigorously track and triage feedback.
All of the useful product feedback we set out to harvest will be lost, should the team neglect to track and triage it. For these purposes, we chose to use Reacji Channeler, a Slack Plug-In that enables the efficient tagging, sorting, and routing of individual messages by simply “reacting” to them with a predefined emoji. In this way, we could “react” to bug-related feedback with a ladybug emoji and know it would be sent to engineering, while we could “react” to usability-related feedback with a clipboard and know it would be sent to design. The whole team was involved in “reacting”– it was a low-lift way to make sure the Beta feedback was being sent to the right place, without having to dedicate an entire afternoon to answering users’ questions. After all, the team is busy building a new product!
We also used Instabug, an in-app service that allows users to quickly and easily share bugs, logs, and crashes. Users have the option to report areas of improvement directly. In general, Instabug feedback would be sent to engineers or QE folks, while usability requests or feature requests would be sent to Research to analyze.
6. Actionably analyze the feedback.
Following the sorting of inputs using the Reacji Channeler, the feedback can be shuttled into a database software (we used Airtable), where it can be sorted, tracked, organized, and analyzed by a researcher. The entire team should have access to this data so that they can reference it if they’d like to harvest the details. After analyzing the feedback in the Airtable, the researcher shares the findings with all cross-functional teams, who can then implement the feedback. For us, that took the form of a weekly segment at our All Hands meeting, where the researcher shared the top few insights coming out of the beta: feature requests that were coming up time and again or repeated usability issues. (It’s important to note that this was done for multiple countries, per the international point above.
For instance, the top U.S.-based feedback would be shared at this weekly meeting, but so would Japanese feedback. This was very helpful for getting the whole team onboard with culturalization. Each finding was paired with actionable recommendations and next steps. Depending on those steps, some of these recommendations were input into Jira, which ensured accountability.
7. Internationalize all processes.
On that note of inclusivity, it is important to consider the full range of your potential audience. For that reason, all practices should be operationalized internationally as well. Internationalization is not just about localization. As our colleagues Wilson Chan and Mika Nakamura point out, international research extends beyond language to include cultural colors, symbols, aesthetics, device usage, connectivity levels, technical standards, workplace processes, purchasing styles, learning styles, and even legal considerations. For all of the best practices we outline in this article, we recommend operationalizing them in other countries (and languages/cultures) as well.
Image created by a Japanese Beta participant, Shunsuke Satake, in Illustrator on the iPad.
8. Find your village.
It takes a village to raise a beta! A successful beta requires dedicated cross-functional resources. Depending on your team structure, that may include engineering, product management, design, research, QE/QA, content strategy, and community management. We’ve found that a beta works best if someone is dedicated to it as their main focus – that’s right, running a Beta can be a full-time job. We strongly recommend having a UX researcher involved in the process from start to finish. While they likely won’t run the day-to-day logistics of the beta, the researcher can set up the program to get the best data possible. This means gathering data that is actionable and predictive. The UX researcher can help with activities such as user-facing feedback sessions, surveys, and data analysis. It’s also important to point out that beta users are often fans of your product (more on that later). A researcher will be aware of this positive bias and account for it in their analysis.
9. Evaluate longitudinally.
One of the strongest tools in a researcher’s toolkit, a longitudinal study allows the team to focus on full workflows in the app over a significant period of time (e.g., a month) in order to better understand the user experience over time. For our longitudinal studies, we start out with a 30 minute pre-study ethnographic interview with each participant. Then, there are weekly tasks requiring participants to go through key workflows and identified risk areas. Participants are required to provide structured written feedback at the end of each week. We close with a 30 minute post-study debrief and feedback interview with each participant. Throughout the entire process, participants have an open channel with the moderator, and participants are encouraged to contact the moderator at any time with frustrations, bugs, problems, or questions. Again, it’s important to include people with disabilities and people with international perspectives.
The results of a longitudinal study can surface what helps or impedes user success, and they can also provide a way to measure proficiency improvements over time. For example, one of the key metrics we look for is a user’s perceived competency increasing over time; at the same time, their time-to-complete (or the length of time it takes them to complete a task) should be decreasing with increased proficiency. Basically, you’re aiming for something that looks like this:
10.Benchmark the results.
Benchmark testing offers consistent metrics upon which to measure the users’ perception of the application over time. In particular, benchmarks provide baseline metrics to monitor and track over time as new releases go out, thereby measuring the impact of bug fixes, performance updates, and new features that accompany each release. They inform the team as the app continues to evolve by identifying any barriers to success and satisfaction that might be addressed (mental model mismatches, unclear copy, quality of onboarding, etc.). They also allow a researcher to gather deeper insights into the user’s experience. For this purpose, we use in-app surveys that are pushed at every substantial update.
Choose the metrics that you are most interested in measuring over time – some ideas: ease of use, performance, satisfaction – and ask them as survey questions using Likert scale response options. A great metric for betas is the users’ “intent to integrate” the product. That is, would they actually use this app if it was launched tomorrow? We also recommend pairing each quantitative question with a qualitative open-end question; that is, ask “Why?” for each Likert scale question. Numbers alone don’t tell the full story!
Though a Beta program requires an up-front investment of time and resources, it is substantially easier and less expensive than trying to retrofit a mis-designed app after it has been launched. The rich information gathered through our beta program enabled the Illustrator on the iPad team to make critical pivots during development, gauge product readiness, refine marketing materials, and release a product that was met with success and user appreciation.
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