Part 1: Who is the user?

Interviews

We conducted a set of 9 interviews with professional and hobbyist layout designers. We were looking for major pain points and breakdowns in the creative flow. We were looking for specific stories.

Here is the list of the most interesting findings:

• It's hard to properly align elements on the page. Sometimes our interviewees would simply resort to eyeballing it.
• The UI feels cluttered. One participant compared InDesign and Affinity Publisher to tools like Figma or Sketch. Those screen-design tools, they said, were better at showing the right controls and hiding the rest.
• Looking for a feature, our interviewees always Googled a solution, and never used the guides and the help provided by the tool.
• Most of the interviewees had trouble organizing their files. They mentioned resorting to naming files as "final.indd", "really_finall.indd", "OK_REALLY_FINAL_NOW.indd", etc.
• The interviewees also mentioned not being able to experiment with different alternatives. They would often duplicate elements, slightly modify them, and keep the version that looked better deleting the other one.

Personas

John

, 24

• A design student
• Works as a freelancer as a layout designer in spare time

Mary

, 36

• Runs a design agency
• Focuses on advertising products (flyers, billboards)

Leonard

, 27

• Intern at Mary's agency
• Worked with print in a print studio
• Recently switched to digital layout design

User Profile

A professional layout designer working in a team. During their workflow, they need to handle multiple file versions, and duplicates of pages with small alterations. Their team members are not always at the office at the same time. Some team members might have to take pauses between working on a specific project, and work with a different client. They might have created conventions for naming the different versions of files or might have developed workarounds using cloud drives.

Part 2: What is Possible?

Design Problem

Most of our interviewees had trouble testing out different variations of their designs. They would either duplicate a page and then create a version with a slight variation, or they would create a completely new document where they would test out their idea. The team decided to focus on that issue because it seemed an interesting problem to solve.

The video below demonstrates the described process on a simple graphical element.

Brainstorming

We brainstormed twice: a classic list pass, then a video pass. First we dumped every idea and voted.

Then we took the shortlist and filmed quick interaction probes. That second pass showed what felt plausible before we invested in higher-fidelity work.

Part 3: What Should It Be?

Design Space

We pulled out the main dimensions behind the ideas: customization, accessibility, hardware versus software, and so on. Mapping ideas into that space and nudging them along each axis surfaced gaps. That exercise produced a clear “aha” about where to push next.

Design Concept

What if versioning applied not only to the document but to anything that changes while you design? What if you could swap versions of a logo, a swatch palette, or a master page layout?

Therefore, our design concept is:

Future Scenario & Storyboard

To help us imagine how our concept would work in a real-life environment, we imagined a future scenario where layout designers use our tool in their work. Our three personas worked on the same project and designed using our tool. From the scenario, we drew up a storyboard and shot a video prototype.

Part 4: Does it Work?

Design Walkthrough

We sat down with a team of peers and showed them our work. We analyzed each interaction trying to make the tool more versatile and intuitive.

Some of us were familiar with versioning tools such as Git. We often fell into a trap of mentioning metaphors and concepts inspired by those tools and had to actively fight to think outside the box.

Conclusion & Improvements

The tool we developed doesn't focus on collaboration, but on individual exploration, and organization of a project. We would love to further explore the ways the tool can be modified to help teams of designers work on the same project.

We would love to further explore permission systems, and allow different stakeholders to modify the elements they are in charge of, without interfering with the work of designers.

Versioning is hard, and no system is perfect. Git is powerful and alien to most layout designers. Code is mostly text; print and digital layout are not. We wanted something visual first, with a gentler on-ramp than Git.