The Hidden Value of Unread Design Docs

In large teams, design docs evolve from being merely advantageous to becoming a necessity. As systems grow in complexity, no single individual can hold the entire design in their head. Design docs serve as the crucial medium for communication in these scenarios. 

They function as “requests for comment,” enabling team alignment on goals, early identification of potential issues, and leveraging of collective expertise. These documents are the lexical manifestation of the vital cross-team communication required to tackle complex systems.

But in the moment, design docs seem overhead. This impulse is compounded by the reality that design docs can rapidly become obsolete. As product requirements shift or implementation details change, outdated documentation can become more of a liability than an asset if not consistently updated. Why write all this for no reader?

Because the benefits of design docs go beyond collaboration. 

Writing is structured thought

Design docs are informal documents. The fact that so many teams have so many variations shows that they aren’t some set-in-stone formal exercise. There’s no Design Document^TM certification.

But informality != ambiguity.

Documenting structures thought. You're forced to think through and articulate the aspects of the system you're proposing. This process of transforming nebulous concepts into concrete plans can be invaluable, even if you're the only one who sees the document.

Let’s say, in the vein of popular current features, you’re adding AI to your product. The immediate desire is to grab the example code from the OpenAI docs and go to town. But, by taking the time to write a design doc, you're forced to consider crucial aspects like:

1. API choice: Is the OpenAI API the right solution? What about Anthropic or an Open Source model?
2. Privacy concerns: What data will be sent to the AI model, and how will you ensure user privacy?
3. Error handling: How will your system respond if the AI produces inappropriate or irrelevant content?
4. Scalability: How will this feature impact your costs and performance as usage grows?

All of these might be questions you think about briefly but never explore or problems you encounter as you build and have to hack against. Putting them down in a design document creates a more robust, well-thought-out implementation, even if you're the only one who reads the document.

Combat scope creep

Writing a design doc compels you to define the boundaries of your project explicitly. It's easy for scope to creep when ideas are just floating in your head. 

With design docs, you're forced to delineate what's in and what's out. This clarity helps prevent overextension and keeps your project focused and manageable, whether working solo or in a team. Without a design doc, you might start with a simple idea: "Let's add an AI chatbot to answer customer questions." But as you begin implementing, the scope can quickly expand:

• “What if we personalize responses based on user history?”
• “Should we integrate with our product database for real-time inventory checks?”
• “Can we add multilingual support?”
• “How about sentiment analysis to flag unhappy customers?”

Before you know it, your “simple” chatbot has morphed into a complex system far beyond your initial vision and resources.

Writing a design document forces you to define the core functionality, set clear boundaries, and, most importantly, prioritize. This process helps you stay focused on delivering a viable product within a reasonable timeframe—critical when it is just you.

Gaining the gratitude of future you

A well-written design doc is a gift to your future self. Right now, you know why you chose x over y. It’s fresh in your head. Are you going to know that in even two weeks, let alone two months (or two years)? 

Design docs serve as a reference point, capturing your thought process and rationale at a specific moment in time.  If you step away from the project or feature for an extended period, the design doc helps you quickly reacquaint yourself with the system's intricacies.

They also help with:

1. Debugging: When issues arise, your design doc can help you quickly understand the system's intended behavior, making troubleshooting more efficient.
2. History: By updating your design doc as the project evolves, you create a valuable history of your system's development, helping you understand how and why it changed over time.
3. Consistency: As you add new features or make changes, the design doc helps ensure consistency with the original vision and architecture.

Of course, you might return in two months and see the mistakes, but that’s OK. The design doc also gives you something to build upon–you can take what you’ve written and build something better.

You’ll get a better product

This is the entire point of design docs–why they are worth the time. A designed product or feature is better than a non-designed product or feature. A design doc gets you to a better end state. 

How? Design docs encourage you to think about your product as a whole, not just individual features. Even if the doc is about a single feature or bug fix, you must consider that feature or fix in the context of the entire system. What are the potential ripple effects? What are the interactions or dependencies that might have been overlooked? Design docs force you to consider the broader implications and thus think user-first instead of code-first.

This approach naturally helps avoid technical debt, as choices are made with the full context in mind. By thinking through implementation details upfront, you're more likely to make architectural decisions that avoid technical debt in the long run. While this benefit is often associated with larger companies, it's equally valuable for smaller teams and individual developers, potentially saving significant time on future refactoring and bug-fixing.

It's about investing time now to save time and headaches later.

Requests for (AI) comment

While design docs offer these benefits, creating them is time-consuming and challenging. The process often involves extensive writing, constant updates as requirements change, and maintaining consistency across revisions.

Glide addresses these pain points by automating the initial draft process. By connecting to your codebase and defining a task, Glide generates a rough first draft of a design doc. This draft serves as a starting point, not a final product. It captures the basic Why and How of your project, allowing you to:

1. Bypass the initial overhead of typing everything from scratch
2. Quickly iterate and refine the document with AI assistance
3. Maintain a living document that evolves with your project

Glide's output is intended as a foundation to build upon, not a replacement for human insight and refinement. It will enable you to design better and build quickly in two ways:

1. You become the reviewer

Glide alleviates two major time sinks in creating design docs:

1. Writing from scratch: It eliminates blank page syndrome and the initial drafting effort.
2. Code extraction and alignment: It automatically pulls relevant code snippets from your codebase, saving you from the meticulous task of manually searching, copying, and pasting exact variable names and control flows.

This saves time and ensures your initial draft accurately reflects your existing codebase, providing a solid foundation for further refinement. You can then dive into critical thinking and creative problem-solving. This shift allows you to focus on what truly matters–your unique insights, experience, and vision for the project.

The AI-generated doc serves as a springboard for your ideas and strategic decisions that you shape and refine. You can quickly identify areas that need more thought, spot potential issues that weren't initially apparent, and inject your tribal knowledge form your code into the design.

This approach leverages expertise more efficiently. Rather than spending time on the mechanics of writing, you can dedicate energy to high-level architecture decisions, feature ideas, and thoughtful consideration of edge cases. It's about using AI-generated content to amplify your thought process, not replace it.

The goal is to create a design doc that captures your vision and reasoning, even if you're the only one who will read it. The AI gives you a head start, but your critical thinking and decision-making will transform that initial draft into a valuable blueprint for your project.

2. AI becomes your partner

Glide's AI serves as a catalyst for your own thinking process. It helps you articulate and expand on your existing ideas, making them more concrete. Then it can assist in exploring variations of your ideas, helping you see potential pitfalls or advantages you might have overlooked.

The AI can remind you of approaches you're familiar with but might not have immediately considered, sparking those 'aha!' moments. Through chat, you also have an AI “sounding board,” a partner to bounce ideas off of, helping you refine your thoughts through dialogue.

The AI is there to support and enhance your expertise, not to replace it. The core ideas and decisions remain yours; the AI simply helps you express and explore them more effectively.

The goals and non-goals of design docs

It will always be better to get another pair of eyes on your design doc. Even if that person (or AI) points out a single issue, it will have been worth it.

But creating design documents is also a goal in itself. Even if it's just you, having your eyes on the document and seeing your thoughts down in black and white will help you spot the problems. If you make design documents a habit, you will build better products now and in the future. Getting started using AI and then using AI to iterate takes away the massive burden of these documents.

The non-goal of design docs? Perfection. Design docs aren't meant to be flawless, all-encompassing blueprints that predict every possible scenario. They're not about creating unnecessary bureaucracy or slowing down the development process. The goal is to improve your thinking and decision-making, not to make a burden of documentation that hinders progress.

If you are interested in adding design documentation to your process with low overhead, reach out to us so we can show you how Glide can help you build better software.