UX Design Documentation Guide
A comprehensive guide to documenting your design process, decisions, and rationale
What is Design Documentation?
Design documentation is a set of documents and resources that record the unique process involved in creating, working on, measuring, and iterating a new feature.
You're not just writing about what should be done — you're logging what you've actually done and why you did it.
What to Document
Why Bother with Documentation?
For Your Future Self
Documentation allows you to reflect on your design choices and log your thoughts for later. Your future self will thank you when revisiting old projects.
Product & Strategy Alignment
Design documentation represents how you're manifesting and acting out the product strategy. It gets everyone on the same page with design decisions.
Sanity Check Your Work
Documenting your thought process helps you find plot holes. Did you cover everything? Are there missing pieces? It's like QA-ing your own work.
Documentation Checklist
Product Strategy Context
Outline why you're building it, what audience you're targeting, and where the feature plugs in
Patterns & Design Systems
Document high-level rules and patterns that apply across your product
Design Rationale
Explain why you made key decisions and how you arrived at the final deliverable
Design Principles
Define guidelines that help your team stay aligned as you build products
Version History
Capture different versions and document thoughts for future iterations
Edge Cases
Document wacky and weird situations that might arise in layouts and interactions
Best Practices
Get Your Head in the Game
Make documentation a key part of your role as a designer. Be disciplined and take a slow and steady approach.
- Start with simple steps like adding sticky notes to wireframes
- Be mindful of moments when you realize how easy it is to forget crucial info
- Make documentation a habit until it feels like second nature
Bring the Crew Together
Have a session with your team to align on documentation expectations.
- What should be in the documentation?
- What is the dev team used to seeing?
- What has often been missing?
- What's doable to produce and integrate into your workflow?
Go from Overview to Specific
Don't jump straight into granular details. Show the bigger picture first.
- Use low-fidelity flowcharts to show how new features fit
- Communicate where it plugs in and why
- Show entry points and user paths
Use a Matrix for Conditional Logic
When you have many states and conditional logic, use a matrix to represent all variables instead of writing long-form text. Color-code for clarity.
Documentation Tools
Figma
Use sections, status labels, and Dev Mode to organize your canvas
Notion/Confluence
Great for textual documentation and creating a source of truth
Loom
Create video walkthroughs to orient people through your documentation
FigJam/Miro
Perfect for collaborative flowcharts and user journey mapping
Start Documenting Today
Use our templates and tools to streamline your documentation process