At Citrix, the Product Design team evolved and morphed through various company reorganizations, and our “how we work” documentation needed updating. Designers are visual folks by nature, so contributing, finding, or reading Confluence pages was no one’s idea of fun.
Inspired by Dianne Que’s presentation at DesignOps Summit 2019, I started documenting some of our operational information in playbooks. I chose Miro over a documentation or presentation tool to organize the playbook pages so my teammates could quickly scan them. The playbooks were a great way to inform the team without seeming too formal and intimidating.
In a year (and mostly on my own), I wrote and created 16 playbooks covering a broad range of topics and horizontal programs, including:
- Employee performance—goal setting and giving feedback
- Design system governance
- Design accessibility and localization
- Planning design work using story points
- How to use Figma
- Coach guides—how to mentor others about accessibility and localization
🤩 Impact of the playbooks
I consistently received feedback on how helpful and engaging the playbooks are. While I loved making them, it was even more meaningful when people asked for more! I mean, in all honesty, how often do you come across people asking for more documentation? 🥹 The playbooks gave the team confidence in our best practices and processes, while new hires valued having key information readily available.