Writing design docs for wide audiences
summary
Design docs claim to scale technical decisions by recording concrete requirements, tradeoffs and milestones rather than vague examples. Use a time-boxed prototype to turn unknowns into knowns, store the doc in a collaborative editor like Google Docs or Notion, and include explicit goals and non-goals, API contracts, estimates, monitoring/SLOs, cost and disaster‑recovery plans. Separate concerns into focused architecture diagrams with step annotations, call out reviewers, and start with a one‑ or two‑page doc for easy adoption.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Start
- 0:52What Is A Design Doc
- 1:26Purpose Of Design Docs
- 4:38When Do You Write A Design Doc
- 5:36Prototyping
- 9:38Research
- 13:02Writing The Background
- 13:37Goals And Non-Goals
- 17:47Using Visuals
- 20:14Other Sections
- 21:43Building A Design Doc Culture
- 24:21Resources For Improving Your Writing
- 26:15Dealing With Controversial Topics
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