How to create annotations that let your design work shine Press enter or click to view image in full size Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-wearing-white-t-shirt-3861809/ “Designers do great work, but they don’t know how to communicate it. I get all these screens in a Figma file, and I’m like, where’s your annotations? You can’t go to a VP and show them this stuff.” — Senior Director of Product Design That’s what a Director of Product Design told me the other day, and it’s not an uncommon sentiment. The era of self-explanatory visuals is over. A well-designed screen used to be enough to carry a product review. It doesn’t anymore. The fix is one of the smallest, most transferable skills you can build as a senior designer: a simple three-part frame for annotating your own work. Decision, hypothesis, outcome. Your screens don’t speak for themselves anymore Redesigns used to be drastic enough to speak for themselves.…