Designing in the Open: Our Team’s 30-Day Experiment

Last month, our design team tried something uncomfortable: we worked entirely in the open for 30 days. Every sketch, every wireframe, every half-baked idea — visible to the entire company in a shared Craft workspace. No more "big reveal" at the end of a sprint. No more polished presentations hiding three weeks of uncertainty.

The first week was rough. Designers felt exposed. Engineers started commenting on wireframes before they were "ready." A product manager flagged a usability issue on day two that we would not have caught until user testing. That last one should have been the clue that this was working, but it just felt like losing control.

Collaborative design review

By week three, something shifted. Engineers started sketching solutions in the same space. Product managers added context directly onto design frames instead of writing separate briefs. The feedback loop that used to take a full sprint cycle was happening in hours. Design reviews became collaborative working sessions instead of approval gates.

The biggest surprise was what happened to quality. I expected that showing unfinished work would lower the bar. Instead, it raised it — because feedback came earlier, when it was cheap to act on. We stopped polishing things that were headed in the wrong direction. The 30-day experiment is now just how we work.