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Team Collaboration Optimization: Building a Team Resource Library, Project Management, and Specification Document Writing with Notion
Since April 2019, I have been trying to introduce Notion as a project management platform for design teams. Initially, I simply wanted to solve the problem of cross-project management. After more than a year of actual use, I found that it not only helps with project management but also promotes team collaboration.
This article will review the past methods of creating team resource libraries, project management, and writing specification documents using Evernote, Trello, and Google Docs, and provide examples of using Notion and observations on these tools.
At the end of the article, I will provide a reference URL for the Notion applications mentioned. You can try them out and adjust them to fit your team or personal preferences.
🗂 1. Team Resource Library
For design teams, we often share various design resources, UI/UX references, articles, development tools, learning platforms, useful plug-ins, etc. We will gather these design references together and organize them into a team resource library. If these links are not organized properly, they can easily confuse people.
Notion’s bookmark and gallery functions can easily solve this problem. Below I will share my experience of how to convert from Evernote to Notion.
Building a Resource Library using Evernote
If you record a URL in a busy work environment, it may become like the situation below:
Building a Resource Library using Notion
When pasting a URL into Notion, you can choose different ways to present the URL: URL (Dismiss) or bookmark.
Team Resource Library — Evernote & Notion
Evernote is suitable for text writing and single-column, clean layout; Notion provides single-column and multi-column layout options, satisfying the needs of various graphic and text layout.
🔍 Observations on Notion Bookmark Design
When I am not familiar with the appearance of the URL or the text, I use 5) the thumbnail to identify the possible content of the URL.
As I become more familiar with the tool, 3) the favicon becomes a small but eye-catching presence in the resource library, suitable for situations where I do not remember the tool name, but vaguely remember the favicon.
Although it is a simple URL, Notion’s handling of the URL considers many different aspects, such as making the area larger for easier clicking, providing enough information, and visualizing the information, allowing different users to find the information they need according to their browsing preferences.
💡 Supplement: Notion Team Resource Hub — Database Applications
If you have specific images you want to store, you can also use the gallery function of the database, add specific tags (e.g. Animation, Graphic, UI), and set them up similarly to the bookmark function introduced above. This is suitable for advanced management and searching of a large number of reference resources.
🗂 2. Project Management
Our team has used many project management tools such as Google Sheets, Calendar, Jira, Trello, and more. In Trello, it’s common to create new cards based on task status (To Do, In Progress, Waiting for Response, Done).
After trying multiple project management tools, I found that Notion is a great tool for adding new tasks to a project or making dynamic adjustments to personnel assignments or schedule planning when urgent issues arise.
Using Trello to schedule tasks:
My personal experience with Trello is that as the number of task cards grows, it becomes difficult to get an overview of all tasks because cards can only be sorted by task status (I tried several Power-Ups functions, but still found it difficult to get an overview). In addition, there may be cards below the scroll bar, making it impossible to see all tasks.
When creating cards, it’s easy to do for small projects, but for larger projects, after 10 minutes of card creation, it’s easy to forget which tasks have been created (Did we register the task? Did we write the notification reference to messenger during the meeting?)
At the time, using Google Sheets temporarily eased this problem, but during the course of the project, it was still difficult to add new tasks, insert urgent issues, and coordinate in real-time.
Using Notion to schedule tasks:
The same task list can be switched between minimalist Trello-like boards, calendars, lists, and other modes.
Project Management — Trello & Notion Observations:
Trello’s interface is visually appealing and easy to understand, especially the card design, which makes it an easy-to-use lightweight tool; Notion can be customized and quickly switch between different interfaces depending on different scheduling needs.
Trello Board — Tasks are placed in different completion statuses in Trello, with cards moving further to the right indicating closer completion.
Currently, the project management situations I have encountered can be roughly divided into three stages:
- Project Kickoff: Creating new tasks
- Project in progress: Discovering new tasks & inserting tasks & optimizing old tasks
- Project end: Overall task optimization.
Here is a list of some stages and use cases:
🔍 List Mode
In the “1-Project Kickoff” stage, when I need to list out the tasks that need to be done, I find that using a list is the easiest way to break down each task one by one. Not only can I get an overview of all the tasks, but I can also sort them based on the importance given by stakeholders.
🔍 Board Mode
Boards are Trello’s strength and are commonly used in the “2-Project in Progress” stage to change the status of tasks. It can also be used with minimal plugins.
🔍 Calendar Mode
This is probably the mode our team uses the most. Regardless of the stage, when there is a new task, we need a calendar to help set the due date. At the beginning of the year, I usually mark the national holidays on the calendar (such as Christmas Holiday) to avoid conflicts between work and holidays.
Based on my own experience in various scenarios, I have listed some appropriate viewing modes for different stages. You can choose the appropriate viewing mode based on the situation you encounter to help shorten scheduling time.
(I will share more project management experience with you in the future)
🗂 3. Specifications Document
During UI design, engineers and designers use specifications documents to carefully outline the settings of various components on a page. Therefore, the specifications document will include tables, images, and text.
Taking the implementation of breakpoints and grid as an example, the specifications document will record various parameters in a table and attach image examples and detailed explanations for each device. Therefore, the tool used to record the specifications document needs to be able to layout properly or be easily edited. We have used Google Docs in the past, but its built-in tables are not easy to modify, so we switched to Notion, which can easily accomplish the task.
Writing specifications document with Google Docs
Writing specifications document with Notion
Writing specifications document — Observations on Docs & Notion
🔍 Using tables, images, and files together
In Google collaboration tools, the functionality is split into separate tools for documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and so on, making it relatively smooth to use each one independently. Sometimes it is necessary to insert tables (such as credit card benefits comparison tables, product feature comparison tables) into documents, often with accompanying text explanations.
Additionally, it is a pity that images cannot be enlarged in Google Docs, and image layout is not easy, making the page information longer and less readable.
The following is my experience in creating a resource library, project management, and writing specification documents using Notion, and I shared various Notion application references:
Notion Application References
You can try it out and also feel free to copy and adjust it to suit your team or your own preferences.
1) Team Resource Library
A collection of design references, articles, development tools, and learning platforms.
2) Project Management
Create multiple browsing modes for task lists and work assignments for different work scenarios.
Writing Specification Documents Write a comprehensive document with tables, text, and images (using Breakpoints + Grid as an example).
Conclusion
When searching for project management tools at the beginning, I did not expect that Notion could bring so much efficiency in team collaboration. The application methods shared in this article were not found immediately when first using it. Many times, I did not realize that some methods could solve certain problems, or I was not aware that certain problems were problems.
With a willingness to experiment, I slowly learned from basic articles how information should be presented and experimented with using Notion’s various databases to manage information.
After using Notion for more than a year, my partners and I have continuously developed it into a more suitable way of working for our team, and we have found that through these improvements, work has become smoother and more convenient.
Optimizing workflows to leave more time for more important things
Thank you very much for reading to the end. I hope this article is helpful to your work. If you have other discoveries, please feel free to leave a comment or write to me to share 👏🏻
