How I used Notion to plan a UX Case Study.
This application has taken the industry by storm, so I decided to put it to the test.
As a Product Designer trying to make her way in the field, I’m constantly stumbling across articles dictating the importance of having a strong UX portfolio. Medium houses a mass of conflicting views on the best approaches, and dos and don’ts, which are helpful but also are often overwhelming. In this industry, having an extensive set of well-executed projects is like gold dust. So how do we make one?
This is easier for some than it is for others. Some of us entered UX through an unorthodox path, having never studied Design at a degree level, or taken part in Bootcamps, or the like, and are bound by confidentiality agreements in our current workplace. Some of us have never worked in UX and want to find a way in. Others may have an extensive portfolio in another discipline, but want to transition into UX. If any of these apply to you — read on.
I found myself in the first of these groups, and after spending a lot of time procrastinating on my portfolio, I decided it was time for action. Enter — Notion. It’s been gaining popularity in the Design world as a versatile, customisable workspace that can be adapted to (literally) any workflow. It offers a mass of integrations and widgets which make it ideal for planning big projects.
Getting set up.
I had already generated my brief using a design prompt tool (Figtut and UXChallenge are great options for this). I had been working from a list of UX projects that my portfolio would need, and had decided that my first project would be an E-Commerce website. I used Notion’s Board tool to track the progress of each of these projects.
As I was designing an E-Commerce site (specifically, an organic tea shop), I spent some time creating product mockups and brand assets that could be used (this is optional of course — you could easily use an existing product!). I made use of Notion’s gallery widget to store all the assets I’d need for the project. It’s a great way of keeping all your important documents accessible and in one place, and the preview makes it easy to quickly navigate to the right one.
After my initial planning, I wanted to test Notion’s capabilities in planning for the understanding and ideation phases. I planned out my research and created a reasonable list of deliverables. Each deliverable could be given a new subpage, which would allow me to seamlessly move back and forth between all the materials; this would help me later down the line when I was transferring everything into my portfolio.
I planned out which flows and screens I would want to create (for an E-commerce site, it’s imperative that you put some thought into your checkout and signup flows). I created pages for these flows, as well as user personas, user screeners and interviews, and also added pages to house all my future mockups and prototypes. Notion even allows for embedding Figma files directly into its pages.
Roadmapping.
The last step was creating a roadmap to plan out how I would be spending my time. Notion’s timeline view allows you to link to a central database and map out a roadmap for your sprint. Here, I just added all my deliverables in the order I would be completing them, and added some time at the end of the project to review my work, ready for the portfolio. The timeline widget is one of the many features that Notion boasts for team workflows. I particularly love the option to personalise which views you want to see. I can see this being an invaluable feature in design teams in particular; you can assign tasks to the relevant team member and update the task’s status to keep all your work synchronised. Even for my own case studies, this would be an incredibly useful way of managing my time and ensuring I was always on track.
Final thoughts.
It’s no wonder why Notion has gained such popularity in the Design world. It rivals other project management applications such as Jira and Trello and combines them with file synchronisation to create a product that houses (literally) everything you need to complete a design project. Having spent a couple of weeks testing it out, I still feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of its capabilities (seriously, there’s a lot you can do with it). For now, I’m definitely going to continue using it for my UX case studies, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a tool that was used by my design team in the future.
