How Designers Use Notability

For designers, ideas rarely begin as polished mockups. They start as rough shapes, half-formed thoughts, research insights, and the countless fragments that eventually become a cohesive user experience. Whether you’re mapping user flows, synthesizing research, or sketching interface ideas on the go, Notability gives designers a flexible space to think visually and stay organized in every stage of the creative process.

At Notability, our own design team uses the app daily to think through problems, take better notes, run research, collaborate across platforms, and stay inspired. Here’s how designers use Notability to shape ideas into real product experiences, from UX to product to research to brand.

Sketch First, Refine Later

Before committing anything to Figma, many designers on the team start with unrefined sketches in Notability, allowing for quick, expressive thoughts without constraints. “You want something low-fidelity before you remake the entire website or product. So, I draw out my ideas first to see if they make sense,” says Esther Lee, Associate Product Designer. Esther uses Notability to sketch early wireframes, explore user flows, and test the logic of an idea before going high-fidelity.

Design Manager Maya Muranaka relies on Notability for the same reason. “Before I get into Figma, I have to make sure the flow makes sense in sketch form. I write down ideas, break them apart, move blocks around, and do a lot of mind mapping. It’s how I make sense of everything.”

With digital ink, shape recognition, and infinite canvas space, designers can iterate quickly, draw over imported screenshots, and rethink flows without being slowed down by layout or structure.

A Fluid, Yet Structured Workspace

Designers spend a tremendous amount of time gathering insights through interviews, surveys, testing sessions, and more. Notability becomes a central hub for capturing and synthesizing everything. “I use my iPhone to record meetings and interviews, and I love being able to combine audio with visuals in a single note,” shares Gabi Parsons, Senior Product Designer.

During mixed-methods research, Gabi records interviews, captures visuals, and jumps into transcripts and Smart Notes summaries to quickly share insights. Her audio recordings become searchable, meetings become more accessible, and research becomes easier to synthesize. “Capturing audio and having handy access to transcripts is vital to me since I have ADHD… Notability keeps everything in one place,” she says. “Being able to move seamlessly between my iPhone and the web app to type out research insights, with everything synced and in one place, makes my workflow feel much more cohesive,” Gabi says. This flexibility keeps designers in “thinking mode,” and not struggling to stay organized.

For designers partnering with external agencies or cross-functional teams, Notability’s structure of subjects, templates, searchable handwriting helps keep research organized and easy to revisit. Designers like Maya work everywhere: at a desk, in a meeting room, on their commute, or between Figma tabs. Notability lets them shift effortlessly.

“I can access my content from my computer while I work, but then I’ll switch to my iPad and I can still reference the actual design work that happens in Figma. And when I’m in Figma, I can reference the sketches I did on my iPad on my Mac. So I can have them side by side,” Maya explains.

Stay Present During Meetings & Conferences

As a designer, you may frequently attend design critiques, cross-functional syncs, stakeholder reviews, and when possible, conferences. For Ashley Zhang, Product Designer, Notability helps her stay present and on the go. “When I go to design conferences, I use Notability on my iPad to take notes. I handwrite my notes, take photos of slides, and add them into the note. My iPad is lightweight and I don’t need to carry my laptop around,” she says.

While working in the office, Ashley records partner meetings, pulls Action Items (coming soon!) and shares summaries with her team, turning long sessions into actionable updates. “I use Action Items to track what I need to follow up on and send reminders to Slack.” Chad Jensen, Senior Product Designer, also uses this upcoming feature to turn his Live Transcription into automatic to-dos. “You can drop a live transcript from a meeting into a note and Notability will generate Action Items for each team member,” he explains. Instead of rewatching recorded meetings or losing tasks in scattered documents, designers get a clean list of next steps instantly.

Use Notes as Collaborative, Evolving Documents

Design also often involves collective ideation through roadmaps, critiques, and planning sessions. Product designers like Chad use Notability Web as a collaborative workspace. “Our roadmaps start as headers, lists, and notes in Notability. The group adds input, and the document evolves over weeks into a structured, vetted reference for everyone,” he explains.

With Notability Web, Chad keeps a daily running note of ideas, questions, and insights. Notability allows him to quickly capture thoughts before they disappear. “The quickness of creating a new note, typing what you need, moving on, and coming back later is valuable,” he affirms. The result is a fluid workflow where ideas are captured early, iterated collaboratively, and kept accessible across devices.

Annotate, Remix, and Build From Real UI

At Notability, our designers often combine Figma components, screenshots, and images with sketches to think through interfaces. Maya recommends this exact workflow, sharing that, “You can copy Figma components into Notability, drop them in, and start annotating and sketching based on real UI.”

For visual thinkers, the ability to mix ink, images, screenshots, stickers, and templates makes Notability a unique design sandbox. Esther uses Stickers and media imports to collect inspiration. “When in split screen on an iPad, you can drag assets from your camera roll into Notability, turn them into stickers, and use them while sketching. It’s great for ideation,” she shares. From early moodboards to UI markups, designers can sketch, annotate, remix, and reorganize ideas in one versatile space.

A Creative Space Designed for Designers

Across interviews, planning, research, and sketching, designers rely on Notability because it supports the full creative lifecycle, from a vague idea to polished execution. As Maya advises, “Sketch your ideas first. Notability makes it easy to brainstorm, move things around, and build clarity before going high fidelity.”

And Esther sums it up best. “Other apps can’t replicate the feel of Notability’s ink. When I need to cut the noise, I step back and sketch, and Notability is where that happens.” Notability gives designers a flexible canvas to think visually, collaborate fluidly, and stay connected to inspiration, anywhere their work takes them.