Documenting design decisions may sound like a formality, yet in modern organisations, decisions are expected to be informed, traceable, and data-driven. It becomes the backbone of alignment. Designers create the visuals, but the intention behind them still requires articulation. We often hear, “Some people just don’t get it.” Correct: 92% of the population does not intuitively understand the golden ratio, and yet designers often treat it as essential for survival.
Over the last decade, we’ve worked with nearly 100 organisations and interviewed more than 600 design directors across in-house teams, startups, scaleups, SMEs, and major global financial institutions. We asked each of them a single question: “What is your secret to documenting design decisions?”
The answers ranged from “we don’t document anything” to “development owns everything, design has no authority.”
But after hundreds of interviews — from Chile and Brazil to South Africa, the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, and across Europe and North America — a pattern began to emerge.
Design leaders were no longer talking about screens. They were talking about communication:
“I make communication clear so my team can do X.”
“I help shape the narrative. It’s not about screens anymore.”
“Separating UX and UI documentation changed everything.”
Across all these perspectives, one shared structure consistently appeared. The essential documentation for a product or service could be organised into nine simple categories. Replace APP* with your own product or service name:
Business
— 1.0 - APP Hello*
— 2.0 - APP Business*
— 3.0 - APP Research*
Design
— 4.0 - APP Content*
— 5.0 - APP Experience*
— 6.0 - APP Design*
Development
— 7.0 - APP Development*
— 8.0 - APP Releases*
— 9.0 - APP Integrations*
In the following sections, we summarise what each section means and how it supports scaled delivery. For deeper exploration, visit Design at Scale™ GRID Magazine.
Before adopting the 3×3 model, every team must define its knowledge base — the single place where decisions live in their most digestible format: text. We reference Confluence, but Notion, GitHub, or any wiki tool is sufficient if used consistently.
