Is design documentation selfless or selfish?
Vertika Nigam
6 replies
A significant yet often skipped part of design is its documentation.
Documentation is selfless -
Because the more the clarity of your details, the easier it becomes for the development team to take it forward from there and create a pixel perfect output, as you envisioned in your design.
Documentation is selfish -
Because you avoid a lot of back-n-forth with the rest of the team and other departments to explain every tids-n-bits of the design. Also, it makes it easier for you to expand on the first version of your design, and save time and effort.
Good design documentation doesn't mean long paragraphs that no one will read.
In fact, this documentation can be done quite visually, making it easy & quick to understand, with only the supporting instructions in detail.
Do you think design documentation is important, or is it just a waste of time?
Replies
Giovani Drosda Lima@kitamashi
From a developer's POV:
Documentations are always necessary in terms of scalability and maintenance. Even if the code (or design) is easy to follow, the idea behind it isn't - this is even more true when looking into the future.
If from state A it's possible to follow the paths 1, 2 and 3, it's sometimes hard to tell which of them fits the product's original idea and general path with no documentations whatsoever.
Docs are like a map in a sandbox world. You don't really need it to explore, but oh boy how it helps to find a goal.
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@kitamashi That's a much needed POV. Ultimately it's the developers who are going to use the design.
You nailed it with the analogy of maps.
With design should definitely come documentation. When a design is not documented, there is no life cycle and its useful life ends immediately.
When a design is well documented, you can always go back to it and use it for something different, hereby extending its useful life.
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That's a great point @theonlyleke !
Using that documentation, even the marketing team can create collaterals without repeated efforts.
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Design documentation plays a crucial role in keeping everyone on the same page and ensuring that your vision is accurately translated into the final product. It's like a roadmap that guides the team towards the destination of a successful design implementation. So, in the end, it's definitely a valuable investment of time and effort.
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