Folio: Documenting and Investigating the Design Process
What the folio is for
The folio is the evidence trail of your design process and investigation. It should let a reader reconstruct how your thinking developed: the problem as you first understood it, the questions you asked, the sources you investigated, the alternatives you generated, the tests you ran, and the decisions you made.
Concepts to understand: design thinking cycles (empathise, define, ideate, prototype, test - and the loop back); primary and secondary research; visual and contextual investigation (practitioners, movements, materials, users); ideation methods (mind mapping, sketching, thumbnails, morphological analysis); prototyping and testing (paper mock-ups, user trials, material samples); annotation as analytical writing, not labelling; and iteration - documented cycles of make, test, revise.
Traps in questions
- A folio that is only finished-looking drawings. Process evidence - rough sketches, failed attempts, notes - is what is assessed.
- Research dumped without analysis. Each source should change or sharpen a decision.
- Annotation that describes ("I drew a logo") rather than analyses ("I reduced the mark to two shapes so it survives at 16 px").
- Confusing quantity with quality: many undifferentiated thumbnails score lower than a few tested and compared ones.
- Forgetting to record the rejection of ideas and the reason.
Worked example
A candidate designing packaging records: a user survey showing shoppers misread the opening instructions; three structural mock-ups with photographs; a note that mock-up B tore at the fold, so the crease was moved; a comparison of two typefaces at shelf distance; and a final annotation linking the chosen structure to the survey finding.
Rule of thumb: if a page does not show a decision, a test, or a reason, it is probably decoration rather than folio evidence.