How to make a practical and beautiful design document

Foreword: Recently prepares to do a design document to share, but has not had the time to tidy up the keynote, here first shares a design document template, as well as the template each element usage rationale and the method. Later in the design document sharing, more design documentation cases will be added to analyze the discussion.

Here we go.

As an interactive designer, we want to master the product's background, logic, and user experience globally. However, we cannot ignore a critical step in the design process and design the output.

If we export the design documents by email or other sea news, are there any product managers complaining that they don't understand? Are there any development complaints about inefficiencies in the use process? In my previous work experience, I have maintained a way to output design documents, InDesign + PDF, the previous product colleagues and development colleagues received feedback is good, here also want to share and discuss this way is not suitable for our Tencent product development rhythm.

There are many benefits to using InDesign to output PDF design documents:

1, the design document is structured and the reading efficiency is improved.
2, design documents suitable for printing, in many review occasions to read paper more effective. (Please also pay attention to environmental protection)
3, a section tells a story, clear and clear, not all the scenes are concentrated on one page.
4,indesign can set text, picture format, through style to manage, greatly improve the efficiency of modifying design documents.
5, the design of the document simple and beautiful, so that readers relaxed and happy.
6, Notes, interactive forms, in conjunction with the design diagram of the way, comprehensive, content concentration, no additional annotations required.
7, can cooperate with visual design for document output, as a complete reference.
8, to help knowledge preservation, knowledge dissemination.
9, the designer creates and maintains the design document throughout the product design process, the host sense, the achievement feeling is strong.

Finally, the design document here refers to the only output that runs through all the work of the designer, rather than the summary precipitation after the product design is completed.

This design document template is also changeable, the designer may according to own product demand flexibility change, please do not adhere to the template.

Now let's start digging.

This is the first page: Document cover, document cover is the first presentation of each document, we should clearly convey the basic information of this design document. In InDesign, the top of this page can be set up as a primary template, supporting the entire document.

A. A document manufacturer logo that shows which team the design documents come from.
B. Team or project name, and show document information again.
C. Main title, which is the name of the product and should be throughout the document.
D. The version number is critical, the design document requires strict versioning, and the modification time tells the reader about the latest update of the document; Of course, you can also add designer names, id,email information, etc. as needed.
E. Page numbers need to be in a prominent position, especially at remote meetings, where page numbers can be an important positioning information.
F. First page do not have too much information, it is a good idea to keep the reader focused, and sometimes f and C will be the same.

This is the second page: modifying records, modifying records is indispensable for continually updated product design documents, development, product managers, and designers can quickly understand each version of the modified content based on the change record. For example, the July 12 modified 6 points, and if no records are modified, development may take 1 hours to read 100 pages of documents to see where they have been modified.

A. The modification record should be the second page of the document, the key, the value is big.
B. The content area focuses on the modification date, with the short modification content, the modification content should first indicate the version number, then the modified part and the page number is written to facilitate the reader to consult.

This is the third page: Content directory.

A. The content catalog is the index of the entire design document and is placed in the important position on page three.
B. After you have generated the PDF in InDesign, use PDF to edit each index of the page as a link so that the reader can easily jump directly to the page you want to read.

This is page fourth: segmentation. Before you fully expand your design document, think about what stories each paragraph should tell. No matter how complex the product, can be divided into several stories according to the function, the scene, the user group and so on factor. In each design document, we should think about how to divide the storyline to our product managers, developers, designers, managers, and adapt to the user community, the ideal state, the story of the division is universal response to all the people.

A. Just say one story at a time as the template says.

This is page fifth, content. Content area display is rich and diverse. Here I only give the style, analysis of the style, and then add some of the content can be added to the document.

A. Subtitle, also the story name. For example, the total title of a user-oriented product is the QQ life, the subtitle will be a clear subset of the story, such as a good life of the summer health drinks.
B. Each design map needs to be assigned a title, and in a remote meeting the way the title fits the numbers can greatly improve the efficiency of the communication.
C. In InDesign, I mainly use two design diagrams, one is to generate the design diagram directly in InDesign, one is to put the PSD source diagram directly into InDesign. The first advantage is that all of the designs in InDesign can be set in a uniform style, uniformly modified. The second advantage is that the PSD can output a clearer interaction, a visual map, and InDesign can record the path, and in future modifications, you can modify the source PSD directly, and then refresh the InDesign document to refresh the PSD diagram in all the documents.
D. The note area adapts to each page that needs to be taken notes, very important, can greatly reduce the product manager, the development, the designer continues to ask questions each other time.
E. Notes can also be entered on the Product manager, or the development of the problem. At each review, I will directly mark the points in the document that need to be noticed, so that the modified record of the design party will be directly produced. For example: "These 6 graphs need to be pulled out in 2 seconds and need to be identified with development".

Wrap up––––––-

Only the basic template and InDesign design experience are given today. There are many features to design documents. For example, you can work with 10243.html > visual designers to record both interactive and visual design in a single document. You can even record interactive, visual, front-end development code as a whole document within a document.

After the PDF is generated, it can be put into mobile devices such as the ipad to help you describe several good ideas in a walk with your boss within 5 minutes.

The difficulty in designing a document is that it takes a lot of time to start building, but once the document architecture is set up, the effort to maintain is less than expected, each subsequent output, the designer, and the product manager and the reader, should be happy. ：）

Wrap up––––––-

The following are examples of design documents that have been produced in my previous work, see:

Thank you for reading:

(This article originates from the Tencent CDC Blog, please indicate the source when reprint)