2learn

Notion

What it is

Notion is a document and lightweight database tool: pages that can contain other pages, and databases that can be viewed as a table, a board or a calendar. In a design team it usually holds the research repository, the spec documents and the wiki of decisions.

Why it matters

Research that lives in a folder of session notes is research nobody can find twice. The same decision is argued three times because the first argument was in a chat thread that scrolled away. A wiki with a small number of databases — studies, findings, decisions — makes the team’s accumulated knowledge searchable, which is what turns individual sessions into an organisational memory.

Core ideas

Reach for it when you need to find a decision in six months

The test is retrieval, not storage. If nobody will search for it, a document elsewhere is fine; if the team will ask “why is it like this?”, it belongs in the wiki with the evidence attached.

One database per kind of thing

A study, a finding and a decision are different objects with different fields. Mixing them into one long page destroys the ability to filter and cross-reference.

Studies    owner, date, method, participants, question, link to notes
Findings   study, screen, count, severity, status
Decisions  finding, change, owner, date, status

Cross-references let a decision show the finding and the study behind it, which is how the evidence survives the person who collected it.

Keep a template for each object

A study page with the same sections every time — question, method, participants, findings, decisions — is what makes a repository usable and a comparison possible.

Distinguish the source from the summary

Store the raw notes in a child page and the summary on the parent, and never edit the raw notes. When a finding is challenged, the evidence is one click away.

Write the status, and keep it true

Draft, active, decided, superseded. A repository full of undated, unstatused pages is worse than none, because it is trusted.

Practice

Build a three-database research repository

Create the studies, findings and decisions databases with their fields and templates, and enter the last study you ran.

Done when: opening the decision record shows the finding, the study and the raw notes without leaving the tool.

Write one decision record

For a decision made recently, record the change, the owner, the date, the evidence and what was rejected.

Done when: a colleague can read the record and know why the alternative was not chosen.

Common mistakes

  • A folder of unstructured notes — nothing can be filtered or found twice; fix: one database per object type, with fields.
  • One giant page per project — search returns the page rather than the answer; fix: split into a page per study, finding and decision.
  • Editing the raw notes — the evidence is lost and findings become unverifiable; fix: keep raw notes immutable and summarise above them.
  • No status or date — stale pages are trusted as current; fix: give every record a status and a date and keep them true.
  • Using it as the place work happens — tickets and code live elsewhere, and the wiki drifts; fix: keep it as the record, not the workspace.

Go deeper

Worked examples

Analytics cookies are set only if you allow them. Nothing is loaded, and nothing is sent, until you choose.