Notion

Portfolio.

Lila's Portfolio.

Notify with Notion

When: December 2024

Who: Lila, Hailie, Anh, Aaron

What: Product, UX Design

Role: Data Synthesis Lead

Improved the visibility, usability, and accessibility of Notion’s notification system. We placed 2nd in a Notion x Adobe Designation welcoming 18+ teams of product designers.

When: December 2024

Who: Lila, Hailie, Anh, Aaron

What: Product, UX Design

Role: Data Synthesis Lead

Improved the visibility, usability, and accessibility of Notion’s notification system. We placed 2nd in a Notion x Adobe Designation welcoming 18+ teams of product designers.

The Mission

In December 2024, I partcipated in the Notion × Adobe Designathon, completing a full human-centred design process and presenting our final concept to Adobe and Notion product managers within five hours.

Notion is a productivity platform that helps students stay organised with integrated note-taking, project workspaces, calendars, and AI writing tools. See my two workspaces (personal = yellow, red = business) below.

Lila Cai

is a playful designer originally from Chicago.

WORK

㋡ Notion

㋡ Depop

㋡ Anna Freud

㋡ Coming Soon

RESUMÉ

ABOUT

The Problem

Our team found that users found separated workspace updates, unclear text and inconsistent landing pages hindered collaboration. We gained these insights from web-scraped Quora, Reddit and Facebook posts.

Must open personal inbox to see personal project updates.

Must open my business inbox to see business project updates.

Organising our findings into affinity maps and user personas, our team realised most issues surrounded three core themes: access, visibility, and usability.

The Solution

From our analysis and ideation, we identified three key improvements to Notion’s notification system aligned with the themes we discovered. The final product was informed by group discussions that considered Notion’s existing features and competitor notification systems.

To target accessibility, we proposed a centralised notification system that clearly organises comments and updates from all workspaces.
To target usability, we introduced a priority ranking system for user's comments so they can focus on the most relevant updates.
To target visibility, we suggested clear pop-ups so users can immediately view updates.

To target accessibility, we proposed a centralised notification system that clearly organises comments and updates from all workspaces.
To target usability, we introduced a priority ranking system for user's comments so they can focus on the most relevant updates.
To target visibility, we suggested clear pop-ups so users can immediately view updates.

NEW: Homepage opens first with clear, outlined notification bar.

OLD: Notifications separated by workspace.

NEW: Notifications appear together in inbox.

NEW: Notifications appear all together.

NEW: Sleek, separated updates with rankings.

Conclusion

Massive thank you to Anh, Hailie and Aaron for their collaboration! Together, we made careful decisions under time pressure, gleaned valuable research insights, and won 2nd place overall. We also received valuable feedback from product designers and managers:

"Notification UX pain was clearly articulated and mapped. Overall, great exploration of a topic no other team looked into."
"You honed in on one particular product experience — difficult within Notion. Your focus was very advantageous!"
"Very compelling focus on accessibility, usability and visibility with a solution that effectively address your HMW. Great work."

Overall, this was an amazing experience. Great job, team!

Design family!

WORK

RESUMÉ

ABOUT