Documenting work to tell stories
I learnt about living decks from COMUZI while I was working at IF. If you haven’t heard of them, COMUZI is a great design studio run by the lovely Alex Fefegha and Akil Benjamin.
Since then, I’ve been using and tweaking them at work and in personal projects.
Here I will explain why I’ve found this a helpful way to work and share a basic template.
What is a living deck
It’s a slide deck to document the work as you go. It can become whatever you need it to be. It’s just a deck.
So far for me it’s been useful in a few different ways.
The place to keep everything
A deck that everyone in the team (and other teams or the client) can use for:
- linking to documents (spreadsheets, digital boards, other decks…)
- sharing interesting references
- documenting chats, ideas, crits, workshops…
- that “we should be keeping a list of these ideas somewhere” moment
It’s especially useful when we have to quickly show others what our team is up to or when preparing presentations, as most of the material is already there.
Space for open collaboration
I often use it to ‘think out loud’, sketching some ideas that someone else in the team can then build on, pull apart or comment on. Or to record a chat with a few members of the team that everyone should be aware of. It forces you to frequently materialise and communicate what you’re working on.
A way to tell the story of your work
When you get in the habit of capturing relevant things that happened during the week, you create a timeline that lets you reflect on the work. It helps your team tell stories about what you’re doing and make better decisions in the future.
That’s why I like to document mistakes, successes and feedback when possible. For some people, weeknotes might do that already — you can always add a link.
3 tips to make a living deck work
Maintaining a living deck can feel tedious. If everyone in the team does a bit and finds it useful, it gets easier. These are the 3 things I try to keep in mind.
Index, index, index
It’s one of the most important slides. It helps everyone navigate the deck. You can create different groups or sections, and they don’t necessarily need to be in that order in the deck.
Also, add a link to go back to the index in every slide. I add it by default on the master.
Easy to understand and reuse
Each slide should be easy to understand, even if you don’t work directly with the team. Things like date, who’s responsible for the content on the slide and why it was created can help.
Don’t be precious
Start simple. It doesn’t have to do everything. It shouldn’t. There’s value in the process of deciding what to include and what to leave out.
Test different options and see what’s right for the team. It won’t always look good, and that’s okay.
Try it out
Here’s a basic template to start with.
From my experience, a deck has been the easiest tool to use without creating new accounts or paying for extra software (we all had a Google account already. It would work with Office Sharepoint too).
I’d love to hear how you use it and what works for your team.
