Designers make hundreds of decisions while they work, and the reasons rarely get written down. Margin captures that intent in the moment: one shortcut saves what you are working on, one line saves why, and a timeline keeps it all for when you need it.
We designed and built it in five days as three Master of Design students at UC Berkeley. It was selected as a finalist in the SVSD Design Competition.
Type
SVSD Competition 2026
Duration
5 Days
Team
Role
Research, Interaction Design, Prototyping
Recognition
Finalist, top 5 of 800 participants
OVERVIEW
Margin saves your work and the reason behind it, while you are still working.
Margin runs quietly on your Mac. When something is worth keeping, you double-press ⌘ and add one line about why. Every capture lands on one timeline, so when you need to explain a decision, the reasoning is already there.
The archive: every capture of a project on one timeline, each with its reason.
01
Capture
Double-press ⌘ on whatever you are working on.
02
Add the why
Type or say one line while the thought is still there.
03
Archive
It lands on the project timeline, ready when you need it.
RESEARCH
Designers know documenting matters. Most of them still do it at the end.
We interviewed five designers about how they keep track of their process. All of them said it matters. Almost none of them did it while working, so the reasoning got rebuilt from memory later, if at all.
Talking to designers in our studio about how they document.
The record of how a design came to be: what was tried, what changed and why.
WHAT WE LEARNED
The reasoning is there while you work, and gone soon after.
Donald Schön calls this reflection-in-action: designers think while they make. That thinking is real, but it rarely gets written down. AI tools widen the gap. We make more versions, faster, and keep less of the reasoning. Version 837 exists, but nobody remembers why it replaced version 12.
Reflection-in-action
Donald Schön, The Reflective Practitioner, 1983
FOCUS
Two jobs: make capturing effortless, and keep it all in one place you can come back to.
Every decision after that was a balance between two sides. Seamless: Margin does the work, so you never have to stop. Intentional: you add the meaning, so the archive is more than a folder of files.
Capture
Save the work as it happens.
Archive
Keep it in one place to come back to.
CAPTURE
Point at it, double-press ⌘. Like a camera.
Our first version had a different shortcut for each kind of work, and testers stopped to think which one to press. So we made one gesture: point at what you want to keep, double-press ⌘, and Margin works out what it is.
One gesture for every kind of work.
ADDING THE WHY
Every capture asks one question: why?
Saving a file is easy. The reason behind it is what gets lost. So each capture opens a small card that asks for one line, typed or spoken, while the thought is still fresh.
Capturing a Figma frame, then typing the why.
WHEN YOU FORGET
Margin notices when you forget, and keeps only what changed.
Even one shortcut gets forgotten when the work flows. So after a quiet stretch, Margin asks once if you want to document. With automatic capture on, it keeps only the screens that show a real change.
A gentle nudge after a while without captures.
Smart capture keeps only the screens that changed.
ARCHIVE
A timeline you can zoom, from the whole project down to one decision.
We tried two ways to organise captures: by time and by idea. Time was easy to follow but hid how ideas grew. Ideas showed growth but got abstract fast. We kept time as the backbone and made it zoomable.
Exploration 1: chronological. Easy to reference, but no sense of how ideas progressed.
Exploration 2: by idea. Shows progression, but gets abstract as projects grow.
The final timeline: close-up and big picture in one view.
Every capture can still be opened and used.
Margin keeps the work in its own format. A website can still be scrolled, a Figma flow paged through, a motion piece played and a prototype built with Claude still runs. Coming back to a decision means you can try it again.
Websites, Figma flows, motion and Claude prototypes, opened from the archive.
MAKING SENSE
Margin suggests themes. The designer decides what they mean.
A design professor we showed it to would never hand sense-making to AI: “Why would I give that away?” So the themes view is an open canvas. Margin suggests rough groups. The designer moves, renames and connects them.
From the timeline to the themes view.
ZOOM
One slider, from a single decision to the whole project.
Close-up shows each capture with its why. Big picture shows the whole project at a glance. Moving between them is one slide, so you never lose your place.
The slider on its own: close-up at one end, big picture at the other.
HANDOFF
One record, many uses. The designer decides what it becomes.
Generating the final output inside Margin was faster, but it took away authorship. So Margin packages the record instead: decisions, iterations and every capture with its why, ready to hand to Claude, a deck or a doc.
The handoff panel packages the project, then the prompt arrives in Claude.
01
A review at work
Walk the team through how the design got here.
02
Stakeholder buy-in
Show what you tried and why this option won.
03
Looking back
Find out why a decision was made, months later.
04
A case study
Start from the real record instead of memory.
DESIGN
Minimal on purpose, so the work stays the focus.
The interface stays out of the way. Your work keeps its hard edges, the tool around it is soft. A short onboarding turns the shortcut into a habit, and everything works in light and dark mode.
01
Your work: square
Captured work keeps hard edges and no styling, exactly as it was.
02
Margin: rounded
The tool around it is soft, so it never competes with the work.
Onboarding, one short step at a time.
Light and dark mode.
USER TESTING
Documenting stopped feeling like extra work, and decisions became easier to explain.
We gave the working app to Master of Design students for their own projects. Capturing took so little effort that several said not documenting would now feel like a disservice to themselves.
Students using Margin on their own projects.
OUTCOME
Introducing Margin
Download it for Mac: margin-steel-six.vercel.app
NEXT
From one designer to a whole team.
We scoped Margin to solo work, because the gap is clearest there. But most design happens in teams. Next we want to explore a shared archive, where each person’s timeline adds up to one record of the project.
REFLECTION
One balance shaped every decision.
Seamless versus intentional started as a way to frame the problem and became our decision tool. It also left a tension: we argued that AI makes designers move too fast to keep their reasoning, then used AI to build Margin in five days. Margin does not slow that down. It keeps the record, and the why still comes from the designer.
Margin was selected as one of five finalists from about 800 participants in the SVSD Design Competition. At the final in New York we presented it in a crit with industry designers. We got a lot of feedback, and much of it turned into a discussion about documenting itself: everyone had a view on whether, when and how designers should do it. That told us the problem is real, and that the answer is still open.
The final crit with industry designers at the SVSD Design Competition in New York.
TRY IT
Try Margin on your next project.
Download it for your Mac, capture the next thing you work on as you go and see what the record is useful for afterwards.