UX Team Folder Structure

[anniehirshman-gsa]

Let's discuss our team's folder structure within identity-design-assets, and the sharing of team files more broadly!

Currently, our folder structure looks like:

• Brand Assets/Logos
• Component Library
• Illustrations
• In Progress -- Issues
  • within In Progress -- Issues, folders are labeled by JIRA number (i.e. LG-1111)
• User Flows

Questions to answer:

• As a designer, why do I need a shared repo of design team work? What am I looking to do/find?
• Are there any other users or contributors of identity-design-assets?
• Does this current structure meet our needs?
• Where should we store final files/assets for team collaboration?
• Where should we store in-progress files/assets for team collaboration?

[anniehirshman-gsa]

Would love for folks on the team take a stab at the questions/weigh in here (or we can discuss at a future huddle). I'll start:

Primary need: As a designer, I need a shared repo for final assets so that I can make changes to existing designs that have already been created by other team members. This would save me time and effort, so I don't have to re-build screens. When I view the repo, I'd like to see files organized in a folder structure with descriptive titles that tells me what the project is, so I can easily browse for past files that might relate to my current work. I'd also like to easily understand which files are most recent.

Secondary need(s): I might need a repo to share in-progress design files with other team members, if we need to collaborate on design work or pick up where someone else left off. It would also be helpful to me to have a place to store my design files that is automatically backed up to the cloud and viewable by other members of the team, so I don't have to think about manually uploading files as often.

[anniehirshman-gsa]

Also wanted to highlight the resource @nickttng posted in Slack, the PARA method. I'm very intrigued by this as well, I think it could potentially work for us!

[bpdesigns]

As a designer, I need a shared repo of design team work to understand the decisions that went into the current designs, such as: what user groups and goals are enabled by the current design and what other designs were considered as alternatives so that as develop needs designs I don't solve problems the team has already solved and can see why certain design decisions were made.

Other possible contributors could include anyone on the login team who has an idea or observations that could raise awareness of: a user problem they've experienced or observed, new or extreme use cases that could raise implications for who/how we research and design.

[bpdesigns]

Possibly we could tie each Issue to specific user stories or persona/goals

Also we could use this repo to establish a current understanding of personas for login and update as user needs become more refined or as they evolve.

Some factors for how we might consider defining who our end users are

Achieve these:

• Design Goal 1: Show me I’m safe
• Design Goal 2: Earn my trust
• Design Goal 3: Help me on my way

Through designing:

• UX/UI consistency, information clarity, UX support for the user to correct an error or change information shared.

Archetype considerations: (think personas meets JTBD)

• Level of trust that login.gov will handle their information securely and privately
• Level of understanding about authentication and the security of their information
• Level of understanding about privacy related to data sharing
• Level of technology understanding and access
• Types of applications and goals a user is trying to accomplish via connecting through login.gov

[nickttng]

Historical context: This repo was created because we were not authorized to use Sketch Cloud and Figma (Although, we are in the process of authorizing Figma at the moment). So, the team needed a way to track the latest files with push/pull feature.

---

To answer the initial questions:

As a designer, why do I need a shared repo of design team work? What am I looking to do/find?

As a designer, I need a shared repo ...

• To quickly share links to assets with colleagues
• To quickly find assets locally via in a GitHub folder instead of hunting down (Indiana Jones style) in Google Drive via web browser
• To track history of assets and what changed/updated
• To collaborate with colleagues without overwriting each other's files
• To document and understand design decisions
• To work in the open and publicly when possible so others internally and externally can learn from our work

Are there any other users or contributors of identity-design-assets?

At the moment, the repo is more of a file storage rather than a 'knowledge' repo, so it looks like this:

• Contributors/Users (Primary): Login UX team
• Users (Secondary):
  • Login Engineering: Obtain/download assets, e.g. grabbing a SVG graphic for production use
  • Login Product / Partnerships / Etc: Similar to engineering, but might use assets for slides presentations, references, etc.

In the future: If it has research assets, the motivation of users/contributors would take on another dimension.

Does this current structure meet our needs?

No, it doesn't. It needs to mature and to have a clear system for others to feel comfortable dropping in and moving files around. A suggestion is modifying the P.A.R.A. method to our needs.

Where should we store final files/assets for team collaboration?

TBD by discussions and questions. FWIW, I hesitate to define files/assets with "final" because it gives us a false sense of finality (or at least, for me). Sometimes, we circle back to older files to update or the files evolve over a long period of time.

I don't have a solution in mind, but it would be nice to figure out a way to mark milestones, acceptance/accepted (borrowing from Jira), etc.

Where should we store in-progress files/assets for team collaboration?

Not sure yet. A concern I've had for a while is sharing in-progress files/assets with a link, and then completing/moving the files out of the in-progress folder, which breaks the link.

---

If using a P.A.R.A. method, it could look like this:

identity-ux-assets
├── Projects
│   └── Issues
│       ├── LG-XXXX
│       ├── LG-XXXX
├── Areas
│   └── Login Design System
│       ├── Library - Sketch components
│   └── Research
│       ├── Personas
│   └── User Experience (UX)
│       ├── User flows
├── Resources
│   └── Branding
│       ├── Logos
│   └── Icons
│   └── Illustrations
│       ├── Avataaars
│   └── Screenshots
│       ├── IAL1
│       ├── IAL2
├── Archives
│   └── Projects
│   └── Areas
│   └── Resources

All in all, I think what Ben shared here resonates [in bold].

As a designer, I need a shared repo of design team work to understand the decisions that went into the current designs, such as: what user groups and goals are enabled by the current design and what other designs were considered as alternatives so that as develop needs designs I don't solve problems the team has already solved and can see why certain design decisions were made.

[juliaelman]

👋 howdy! I've opened a draft pull request for us to review during huddle tomorrow: #7 the changes in the request are based off of this conversation. Looking forward to hearing everybody's thoughts!