A design rationale structure light enough to use under delivery pressure and complete enough to survive handover. The PUXD Design Rationale Structure records five things about a decision and no more.
A review-resistant design decision isn’t one that can’t be questioned. It’s one that forces any challenge to engage with the original reasoning. Here’s how documented rationale protects your decisions.
The curse of knowledge does more damage to design communication than any skills gap. Once you know something, you can’t imagine not knowing it, and your reasoning goes unrecorded as a result.
Most design documentation defends a conclusion rather than recording reasoning. Learn the difference between rationale and justification, and why only one survives contact with a future reader.
Good design decisions get reversed not because they were wrong, but because the reasoning behind them was never made visible. Here’s that mechanism and how to protect your work.