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The mise en place of product design
How to organize your design files in a way that mirrors the design process, creates visibility into our work, and highlights the strategic value of product design.
At the start of each work day, I clean my immediate physical space. It’s my version of ‘mise en place’; a French culinary phrase which means “putting in place” or “gather”. Professional chefs use mise en place because it optimizes their work for speed and efficiency. It’s also a term used by psychologists and refers to:
“how a given environment places constraints on what one feels able to do within that environment, and how these assessments and predispositions impact the process of preparing to act.” Wikipedia
Organizing my physical space helps me mentally and physically prepare for the day’s work. The same rule applies to the digital spaces I work in.
When I first started out in design I was curious about what other product designers’ art boards looked like. How did they organize their digital workspaces? In the spirit of helping others just starting out or those with small design teams, I’m sharing how I break down my design files and what I’ve learned after 5 years working as a designer within a UX design and research team of over 300…