How do you document design decisions and rationale on long projects?
How do you document design decisions and rationale on long projects?
On longer projects, I’ve noticed the why behind design decisions almost always lives in someone’s head, a Slack thread nobody can find, or a meeting that wasn’t recorded. The Figma file shows the final state — but the journey that got you there? Mostly gone.
A few situations that have personally frustrated me:
A PM joins mid-project and starts questioning a pattern we spent three sprints validating. A client asks “why didn’t you go with the simpler version?” and reconstructing that story on the fly always sounds defensive. A new designer joins and onboarding them to the reasoning behind decisions takes weeks of tribal knowledge transfer.
I’ve tried running Notion docs, a decisions page inside Figma with sticky notes, milestone slide decks. Nothing sticks the moment the project gets busy.
Curious what others do:
Do you document design rationale at all, or mostly after the fact?
Where does it live — and does your team actually read it?
Has a forgotten decision ever caused a real problem on your project?
If you’ve tried a system and abandoned it, what made it fall apart?
Curious if this genuinely bothers others or if it’s something I’ve convinced myself matters.