Name as You Go | Wireframing and Prototyping Tactics that Matter

I once crafted an Axure prototyping training as a way to sharpen my own prototyping skills in Axure. There was one point I made repeatedly that I want to impress upon you whether you are an interaction designer or visual designer. The larger your files become the more complicated they become. Your design tool will automatically name your layers and objects something basic, and there will come a day when you have to edit some small item inside a frame that you just can't seem to locate. Sure there are short cuts in the system today to help you get to the element faster than before, but the killer tactic that really does the job is naming your elements.

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Make it Habit

It doesn't matter if you are using Sketch, Axure, Illustrator or Figma. Every time to create a component or a variation, name it. Name everything. It makes your files more search-friendly, so that when you are looking for that thing you can just search for it.

Consider it part of slowing down to speed up, if you are worried about it taking time, but it doesn't take much time in the short run if you make it a habit similar to how we Millennials learned to hit CONTROL+S every 5 seconds to prevent data loss.

Not gonna lie, I still download cloud based files to ensure that I have a concrete history of what the design looked like and how it behaved at a key milestone.

Did you make a new file? Name it

When you create a new shape, name it.

Empathize with your future self think of what you will search for when you can't find it. Give it a name that communicates where it is, what component it is part of, how it differs similar components or has a shared relationship with other shapes. For example: You aren't going to search for "screen capture" or "rectangle," but you may search for "Map with Point Data" or "Background | Table Header."

You don't need a special naming function, but it is important to be consistent. If you say "Backing" or "Spacer" try not to switch to "Background" or "Coverup" or "Divider" or "Blank." If you are consistent in your naming, you'll likely be consistent in how you search.

Makes You Enjoyable to Work with

This doesn't just help you as an individual, it helps your coworkers and your clients. On a team with other UX designers I often share files that I've worked on and they share theirs with me. There's always a bit of a learning curve as I figure out someone else's file in order to add or edit. But, something that really stuck with me what how my coworker, Shane, reacted when he opened up one of my files. "You work so clean!" he exclaimed, "You work cleaner than anyone that I've ever seen." I'd never heard that terminology before, but what he meant was that my files were organized and grouped and named in such a way that he didn't need to exert nearly as much effort as he had prior to learn my document, so he was able to active on it faster.

Working on a project for Shift Consulting, I heard how positively my husband Jake spoke of a designer that he really enjoys working with, David, who exhibits similar behaviors. If he receives a design file, he will spend time organizing and providing naming where needed, sot ensure that the file is efficient to work with. And, as he works on files of his own, he keeps the design clean, so that hand-off to the client's team is smooth.

It's a practice that I would love to see more of in the UX design field.

Real Life Example

Here's an embarrassing story for you. Once I created an epic power point presentation for deep UX Research that I conducted by myself, and I started by copying a previous presentation.

I never struggled to find the presentation until the day I needed to present it to my product owner and agile team. I opened my Power Point and couldn't find it. I looked at my recent history and couldn't find it in the moment when I most needed it. Luckily, I had rehearsed my whole presentation multiple times, so I opened my Miro board and just presented off the dome using the research artifacts as my visuals.

A few hours later I found the presentation. I had forgotten to rename it when I created it, so when I looked at my history it looked like something irrelevant to my team project and it had been pushed back in my active history due to repeated rescheduling. If I had just named it when I copied the file, I wouldn't have been stressed by suddenly losing it.

Key Takeaways

Get in the habit of naming every asset as you create it, even if it's not finalized. If you make a rectangle, you're never going to search for "rectangle" in Figma to try to find it; you'll search for "[component-name] background/blocking" so take one second to call it that. It really is a great way to be kind to future you.

• This helps you as much as it helps your coworkers

• It makes your files and assets searchable

• It makes reduces ramp up time for anyone inheriting your work

• It makes working with you more attractive to clients