I learned to use user flows in my first full-time job. (Thanks Rhonda, for teaching me the proper shapes!)

Later, I taught an intern how to use them. A few years afterward, she told me that her ability to diagram had changed her career. She said that it set her apart from other designers as a more strategic candidate.

In UX and UI design, diagrams are simple and effective ways to reveal and communicate important information. They can serve many purposes in the design process, such as:

• Clarifying what already exists.

• Serving as a collaborative spot to capture preliminary requirements.

• Identifying places where decisions must be made.

• Aligning on a plan for the future.

• Revealing the size of the work to be done, so it can be prioritized and planned.

• Visualizing structural before & afters or project phases.

• Supporting conversation around labeling and taxonomy.

• Documenting a user’s flow as they perform a task.

• Highlighting cross-channel interactions or interdependencies.

• Organizing other information such as template IDs or analytics.

At Slide UX, our signature process normally includes mapping out the current state of a user experience to get a bird's eye view of what is there and how it’s organized. This often reveals a lot, even to teams that know an experience well.

We’ll also map out the future state to begin the conversation around where we’re going to head with the new designs.

We use Miro for most of our diagramming, but other apps like Mural, Figma, Google Slides, and others can also work well. Depending on your situation, even a simple whiteboard sketch might do the trick!

Do you use diagrams in your product design process?