Design tip: have a 💩 junk-drawer

Adding a ‘💩 junkdrawer’ page creates a buffer-zone for the designer to explore fuzzy ideas in public.

The time of having private design files is over.

This transparent world means that there will be people jumping in & out of files with things are various stages.

There needs to be a place to explore that doesn’t require you to go to a different file.

What am I looking at?

I was running into issues being the only designer in a company and jumping in between different teams and projects.

To cut down on context-switching, I’d end up throwing half-ideas on the page, but then people wouldn’t know if it was something we were going to make or just a random idea.

I started creating a `💩junkdrawer` page in Figma, and continue to do so.

There’s a weird level of fidelity that is too abstract for words and is just a couple of fuzzy ideas. Having a page dedicated to these fuzzy ideas allows me to work quickly and not confuse the rest of the team.

Add the `💩` emoji to emphasize that this is not meant to be looked at.

(I’ve tried other emojis, and having a piece of shit seems to be the only way to convey that the items on the page are, in fact, not ‘good’ and represent a lot of partial ideas, thoughts-in-progress, or simply a buffer to export assets.)

It’s abstract, and no one will ‘get it’ except the person spending time there. There’s nothing to understand about the page other than it’s more of a loose piece of paper that is on your desk that everyone can walk by and look at.

Tips:

• If you don’t have a 💩 junkdrawer page but already have a bunch of designs done, I’d suggest duplicating a page you want to experiment with & go to town.
• Let people know on the team to ignore everything on this page. It’s just a spot for you to work in (a screenshot of the page & message in a shared product/dev-channel should suffice)
• Be the first on the team to make one. If you’re on a large team of great designers, sometimes people seem only to be showing very polished things (their ‘rough sketches’ should be framed). It takes a little courage, but throwing out your very early concepts will encourage others to do so (everyone has a junkdrawer, but a lot of people keep theirs a secret).
• Take screenshots/upload images from around your environment (physical notes, doodles, etc.), anything & everything that brings you inspiration & context for the project can go here.

If you’re a senior member on the team, it can mean a lot to share ideas that are still ‘rough.’

Examples:

• Here are some of my 💩 junkdrawers

Note, there is a ‘cover’ page because it used to be more involved to set a thumbnail in Figma.

Summary

It can be weird to have people looking at your files and even weirder having to explain that what they are looking at are just ‘fuzzy ideas.’

Having a place that is just for you but can also be seen by the rest of the team is an interesting idea.

Adding a page with [💩 + ‘junk drawer’ / ‘scratchpad’ ] has helped me, and I hope a dedicated gnarly page can help you too.

Best,

Kelsy