Build Philosophy

Keep it simple, user-friendly, and actionable.

In my early excitement to build different Notion pages, I used a lot of colors, emojis, cover photos and more. They looked colorful and exciting. It was one of my draws to Notion.

While I still enjoy them, the inifinite possibilities became a cognitive overload for me when getting started. Now, I start with a simple build, use regularly, and iterate to add & remove features. Real success metric is how often I use it and the outcomes I'm able to drive. Often I come back to a minimal build at the end.

How I build

Bottom up and top down. *cough* Nerd alert! *cough*

I map out the objectives and get to my atomic units of data and big picture review metrics. I then sketch these roll-ups and fundamental units to see if it meets all my needs. At this point, I'm likely stacked with more than what I need. I ruthlessly prioritize and cull down the columns and page content to cover my 'core' needs. Then, I build the page(s) with my scrappy wireframes and notes that act as my product requirement document.

I use the pages for a few weeks (customer), build a backlog of my feature requests (product manage), and iterate (engineer) after prioritizing.

This is only a teaser to the build process. The fidelity of each step of course varies based on the scope.

Colors & Icons

Keeping with the minimal theme, I enjoy the subtle beauty in White & Black. I love Notion VIP's curation of free-to-use icons sourced from Icons8 and Flaticon.