Ep 157| Power of Design Documentation - 5 Steps powerfull Steps to do

In this podcast I'm going to tell you, being a designer, it's very vital to do a documentation. And you'll know why it is important after listening to this podcast. Because I'm going to tell you the power of design documentation. And what are the five different steps you can use to document anything? Let it be a portfolio, your PPT for your boss, or your presentation in your office. You wanted to do a design degree documentation of your project, you wanted to pitch it to your business client, you wanted to archive it, anything. This podcast is going to give you that clarity. Lets jump in to know more details. Let me give you the first important steps guys. Okay, so the very first important step is collect the raw data and drag and drop and dump it. You need to build a big reservoir of your data. Don't worry about alignment, don't worry about order flow, whether the cohesiveness is there between the data is what you're collecting. No, just dump it, dump it, dump it. That's the very first step. See this is a very, very, very, very detailed subject. But I'm giving you in a very good shorter way so that you can able to exactly implement it to get results. Okay, so very first step is dump the data. Second is you'll have to find out what is your real requirement. Are you going to submit to your portfolio? Let's say if you're building a portfolio website or if you're building a portfolio in behance. If you do, if you wanted to do a portfolio PDF file, be clear on that. Or you wanted to send it to your boss for your presentation, you wanted to show it to your weekly presentation of your team, you want to update it to your management or if you wanted to pitch it to your business client or if you wanted to document it as a full case study and a D, which is for your college purpose or which is for your documentation purpose in a more detailed way for your project or you wanted to create an archive for that. Anything guys. Be clear on what you want. That is the second step. So the first step is collect the raw data, dump it. So somewhere in PPT word, Excel, that's not a problem, you can use any tools. That's not a point. Second is clear out the requirement, what you exactly want. Third is try to find out what is the before and after impact of your project. See, we'll go into the second step, little detail after the five steps because each and every segment is has a different things to do like say portfolio pitching for your business client, degree documentation, ppt. Okay, but let me tell you the five steps you need to get this clarity. The third is analyze the impact before and after. Show your pictures, videos and create exact scientific backgrounds and study which is showing exactly before and after. What's your project. See, if you are just doing some text, putting some pictures, putting some random stuffs, this is not called documentation showing the before and after. Like let's say after your project, the cleanliness level of the project society of the street has improved 30 percentage significantly. Show that. That's what is called before and after. If you're not able to show that impact, no point in doing documentation of any of your project. Even if it's a one slider that has to create a before and after impact. Okay, See impact impact impact IM pact. You need to understand this work when you are doing a documentation. Documentation is not just to show something what you got documentation is to project the important highlights your project of your work, how you improved it before and after, right? See the crime prevention that the crime has been reduced 30 to 40 percentage after implementing this application for the women's safety. See, then people will be interested to go and read the document of 500 pages or 600 pages case study. So understand this. The fourth important thing is create a story, guys. It's very, very, very, very, very vital, okay? See when you're not storyfying, people want will not get connected, okay? Whatever project you have, like let's say women safety, okay? You, you have designed an application and then you wanted to successfully launch it. So you're doing a documentation for that. So remember, it needs to have a story. So who is actually a hero and a villain? I'll tell you how to storyfy a project. I've detailed the recorded lot of podcasts. But let me cut short. In your story you need to have a hero, you need to have a villain, which is a difficult circumstances. You need to have a goal what your hero is going to reach that goal. And you need to show the afterlife and enjoyment after reaching his goal. So here the women are the hero, okay? The wilderness of society or the person who is creating problems for them. Okay? That's the circumstances. So the goal is to lead a safer and secure life without getting into trouble of like let's say rape, murder and all these things which is happening to the women's recently. Okay? Recently also there has been a lot of incidents happened. Less than 15 to 20 age girls are brutally getting what you call abused because of the worst practices. What has been happening. So let's say if you are designing a Solution to implement and solve this. So your impact is you are going to reduce that crime by half. Like let's say 100 girls have been going through this problem. After implementing this, you're going to cut short it to less than 50. That is a great improvement, right? So you have to create that story, you have to create that impact background in your mind. And you need to create a hero. Hero is your women girl, right? So villain is the circumstances. So the goal is to lead a stress free life. And the afterlife is women are getting really empowered and they're living freely in the society and they wanted to go wherever they want and they wanted to do whatever they want. And they are finally becoming the big part of this society. Okay? That's the afterlife. In order to create this, your story narrative is there. Okay? Your story narrative is to reduce the crime half. So in this story format, what I told you, hero, villain and goal and afterlife fit this entire context inside and storify it. This is the simplest way to explain storification, guys. If you are able to do it, people will be able to get a great insight. Okay? The fifth important step is please do ask with people like let's say your designers, your co workers, your mentors or your, your seniors, your management. Get some feedback and iterate it. Ask them, do you understand what is this? Just show them one picture or one page or one set of document for your audience and ask them, hey, are you understanding anything by this story? Are you understanding anything by this project? If they're able to give a feedback quickly. Yes, I understood. You are solving a problem of women who are getting into the crimes and then you are reducing it half by your application design. Emergency application design, right? That's it. Your success. Your design documentation is validated. That's it guys. So you don't need a fancy graphics, you don't need so much of fancy videos and this, that professionalism and all you need to clearly tell what you wanted to tell through stories. That's it. So the first important thing, let me recollect you is collect raw data. Dump it, dump it, dump it. Second is clear out your requirement whether you wanted to do portfolio ppt, you wanted to pitch for business clients, do a degree documentation, archive it, anything. Third is show the before and after impact very clearly. Fourth is storyfy the concept of the project, whatever you have. Fifth is get a feedback from your seniors, mentors and iterate it till you get it properly done. If they are saying I am not able to understand it, go and work on that part. Make it out even more simple, make it out even more clear. Collect more data, collect more pictures, collect more videos regarding to that and then you work on your document. If you are able to do this guys in five steps, you will have a great, great, great documentation done for you. Okay, so this is the first half of the podcast. The last half of the podcast is. Okay, Jagdish, I want to make a portfolio. What do I really have to consider? Let me tell you guys, in this portfolio method you need to consider the before and after impact same, okay? And you need to create the storification. I already told you. And when it comes to portfolio, the third step is you can create a pitch kind of a video. You can create a very good catching points and a hook points. Because people are not interested to read your big sentences. People wanted to understand what you wanted to tell in short snippets, either a short 10 second audio or a 20 second video or one big line or heading or one GIF image or any good hook point which you need to create. Okay? Because I'm just telling for the people who wanted to do a portfolio documentation. If you are not able to create that hook, your portfolio will not be viewed at all guys, okay? And circulate it among all of your LinkedIn connects and then your head routers and then your designers to get feedback and also for pitching the job. Okay, this is for portfolio people. And let's say if you wanted to do a PPT way of documentation, always remember PPT is to just create point shooter style. You need to add relevant image only put the hyperlinks of the reference images, whatever you have and then you just create a point shooter style explanation. Don't go into much detail, it's not a, it's not a case study documentation, it's a PPT. Okay? It's a PowerPoint presentation. Point shooter style. Always show the next line item or the next action item. Sorry, in your PPTs, okay, because your boss or your management or anything, they don't want to hear stories. They wanted to hear where you are right now and what's your next step in order to achieve the goal. So in PPTs, always use point shooter style precise images and show the action item and justify what you got as a result, as a process. Because if you're not justifying it, people will not get a connection. This is for PPT makers, okay? The third important thing is if you wanted to do a degree documentation, use lot of Google search methods, YouTube research, ChatGPT, Google Bard and use Google Scholar, create more facts and study and information regarding your topics. Create section wise subsection wise topics and headings and expand upon each and every headings under this tools whatever I told you and research it out in a deeper way. The more case studies you build, the more facts you build, the more data you build, the more experiments and methods you experimented in your whole research process. If you are able to validate it with a scientific method and journal data, you will have a much more clarity on what you wanted to tell. See, people should get the justification and the scientific background of what you're doing, the process, the methods, the data, the study. So if you're doing a degree documentation, remember these things what I told you and then rest become same. See, the first half of the podcast is already told you. You need to create. You dump the raw data. You need to find out your requirement. You need to do a before and after impact, you need to storify it, you need to get a feedback from your mentors and do it. So that's same. But when it comes to documentation of the degree or your degree project or in a detailed case study, this is the way okay, the fourth important thing is pitch for your business clients. This is very interesting guys. See, whenever you're using a pitch for a business client, remember one minute elevator pitch. Okay, if you're traveling with a CEO in an elevator for 40 seconds to one minute, how do you convince your business idea? That should be a goal. Reverse engineer this one minute and create your pitch accordingly. In this, I would say always show the before and after. Always show how your business value, how your idea and creativity can improve the business value proposition and increase the revenues and profits and increase the user experience by how much? If you're able to show that before and after an impact and you're able to attach it with a flirt coat attach, you will be able to win any entrepreneurs or any business owners. Guys, what is mean by flirt quote attach? You can listen. In my earlier podcast I've given a much detailed description of it. Okay, so it's like attaching a coat when you're flirting with your people whom you're talking. Flirt is not in that sense. Okay, Flirt in business language, I'm saying okay, so it's all about how you're able to cut short your one minute answer rather than talking five, ten minutes and everything into just one slider. One. One image, one word, one line. If you're able to convey that, that becomes a clear business pitching Guys, there is no detailed documentation at all. The pitching in business is very, very important for this 1 minute pitch you need to collect lot amount of data, study the background history, do a market analysis, do a pester analysis, do a SWOT analysis, understand where your product or services stands and be clear on your one important thing and show that impact to the business client using a business value proposition returns. If they're able to see it clearly, they will hire you, they will invest in you. That's it guys. It's as simple as that. The fifth important way is archiving, right? A lot of people wanted to archive their project so we have seen portfolio PPT degree documentation pitching for business client. The fifth is archiving. The only thumb rule of archiving is please remember somebody is going to take this data later and read it, use relevant keywords, tags, necessary search words so that they can able to easily retrieve it, Make a very simple English and your style of writing should be very very very very easy and understandable for all the audience. Use a tool called Chat GPT4. You can insert all the content of your whole documentation. Let's say it has 6,000 words or 10,000 words because chat GPT4 is really good. Chat GBD 3.5 has almost 5,000 words it can capture but you can copy paste that word and ask ChatGPT to give a prompt like write it in a easier and simple English. It will give you in minutes of this entire content. Don't worry, the data is protected because ChatGPT and the Google bot they are protecting your data very carefully and the privacy data reports you can see before putting your projects and seal it properly using your username password so that nobody is able to access it. And once if you're able to do it guys, you will get an easy way of writing your project and archiving it so that people can able to view it later. I hope this podcast would have given you clarity the power of documentation for a designer. Thank you so much guys. If you find this useful in Spotify and Apple, if you're listening to give me a best star rating 5 star I would recommend and subscribe me for further episodes and if you feel anything needs to be addressed in your design field, you can write in this podcast. What do you think about it? I'll be more than happy to do a research and help you out. But if you need more support in learning and getting into a product designer or UI UX designer in less than three months starting from scratch, I highly highly recommend you join my program Design for Change mentorship so that I can able to help you out. Recently one of my students has cracked 13.5 LPA in a very short span of time. And one of the student has started from the scratch and then he got 30,000 rupees salary and one of the other student got 25,000 rupees as of completes what you call fresher in less than 23 months. So the possibilities is there if you're able to dedicate yourself truly, send email to the DFC Design for change with your portfolio and resume. Right now a new batch is going to start and we will be happy to enroll you if we find you are serious. Because this is not for everybody. Okay? So thank you so much guys. Take care. All the best. Bye bye.