Design rationale, critique and decision records · Proficient · Lesson 85 of 99 · about 3 weeks
Project: a twelve-week decision and facilitation log
After this you have a dated record of decisions, principles, critiques and a workshop from real work, showing that your reasoning is shared and durable rather than in your head.
Why it matters
Brief: for twelve weeks on real work, (1) write a design decision record for every significant design decision you make or facilitate (at least eight) in a log your team can find; (2) draft a set of three to six design principles with your team and get them adopted; (3) facilitate at least four critiques, recording the agenda and the decisions each produced; (4) design and run one cross-functional workshop with a stated outcome, and record what happened in the month after. Constraints: write records when decisions are made, not retrospectively; every critique ends with written decisions and owners. It is good when someone joining your team could read the log and understand why the product looks the way it does, and when you can point to one occasion where a record or a principle settled a dispute without you.
How to use this resource
The log format to start from. Adapt the columns, but keep 'context' and 'consequences': they are the parts that make a record useful later.