Develop Design Rationale

Creates structured documentation for design decisions by walking you through context, alternatives considered, evaluation criteria, and trade-offs. Most useful before design reviews or when making UX choices that need stakeholder buy-in. The template forces you to document why you picked option A over B and C, which sounds tedious until six months later when someone asks why the navigation works that way and you actually have an answer. Works across triple-diamond, lean startup, and design thinking frameworks. The real value is preserving institutional memory so design decisions don't get second-guessed or accidentally undone by people who weren't in the room.

skills.sh installs: 793
GitHub stars: 794
last updated: Aug 21, 2026

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Install

$ npx -y skills add product-on-purpose/pm-skills --skill develop-design-rationale --agent claude-code

Installs into .claude/skills of the current project.

Files

Design Rationale

A design rationale document captures the "why" behind design decisions.the context, constraints, alternatives considered, and reasoning that led to a particular solution. While designs themselves show what was built, rationale documents preserve institutional knowledge about why it was built that way.