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Designing Docs in Coda
Designing Docs in Coda
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Designing Docs in Coda

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Planning Your Doc

Fill out the workbook below to start organizing your data, your design, and your thoughts. You can structure your thoughts or keep them free form -- just get started!
Step
Description
Questions to answer
Your Feedback
1

Step 1:

Setting Your Doc’s Purpose

The first thing you should do when designing a doc is to write out the purpose.
Who will your doc’s audience be?
What are the key takeaways for anyone visiting this doc?
Is this a standalone doc, or do you want to point to other resources?
​
2

Step 2:

Information Gathering

Think about what data is vital to the doc, and what can be cleaned up or removed.
If you already have this information stored somewhere else, where is it located?
Is any of the information pre-defined (Teams, Project Stages, Statuses, People, etc?)
Will you have one main table with all of your information, or should it be broken up into different sections?
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3

Step 3:

Organizing Your Doc

Think about how the information will relate to itself within your doc, and how to make critical information discoverable.
What relationships does the data have?
How many pages do you want the doc to contain?
How will you organize individual pages in your doc?
How do you expect others to interact with the data?
Where and how will new data be added?
Do you find yourself using the same data in multiple places? If you find that you need to update the same data in multiple places, re-examine how you can create table views.
Which design schema makes sense?
​
4

Step 4:

Presenting Your Doc

As you build out the doc, think about who will be accessing the doc, and how they will navigate through the information.
When somebody new first accesses the doc, will they know where to go?
Is it clear where new data should be added?
Where should there be instructions for users?
Are there any spots where
buttons
⁠
can help make any calls to action more visible?
​
5

Step 5:

Take Your Doc for a Spin!

Pretend you are a new user clicking into the doc for the first time. Add a page to the doc called “Feedback/Questions” and then ask colleagues to share feedback there.
Is the purpose of this doc clear?
Where do you go first?
What is the most important page of this doc?
Where do you input data?
Who else would you share this doc with?
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➡️ Next:
Creating Your Doc
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This is not the way.
Try clicking the ⋯ next to your doc name or using a keyboard shortcut (
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) instead.