Design RFC

A Design RFC is a six field pre ship document that forces designers to record the exact decision, the real alternatives on the table, the constraints that killed every other path, the concrete reasoning that drove the call, the named owner, and the measured outcome after launch. It sits between research and execution. Linear treats design RFCs as first class artifacts that live next to engineering issues. Vercel writes them as product specs stored in the same repo as the code. The format traces back to IETF RFCs from 1969, Christopher Alexander pattern languages, and architecture decision records that Spotify and Thoughtworks sharpened over the last decade. Designers finally picked it up because AI now spits out polished screens in minutes while judgment still separates seniors from everyone else. The RFC makes that judgment legible, versioned, and defensible months or years later.

A Design RFC is not a case study. Case studies repaint every choice as inevitable and polish the story for outsiders. The RFC shows the real forks in the road including the option that looked stronger on paper but died on constraints. It is not meeting notes or a Slack thread recap. Those capture conversation. The RFC captures the decision that survived the conversation. It is not theater written after launch when you already know which variant won the A B test. Post hoc versions stuff the alternatives field with strawmen and the outcome field with only wins. Hiring managers at top teams spot that spin in under two minutes and move on.

The concrete example that hits hardest comes from Linear itself. A design RFC dated 2025 02 14 on their command bar update reads like this. Decision: Make the command bar trigger on Cmd K with three scoped modes that filter results by context instead of one giant list. Alternatives: 1. Global search with heavy ranking algorithms. 2. Separate palettes for commands, files, and people. 3. AI natural language input only. Constraints: Bundle size cannot exceed 14 KB, engineering velocity on AI features is blocked until Q3, accessibility requires keyboard predictability, and brand refuses anything that feels like Copilot copycats. Reasoning: Scoped modes ship this sprint, match existing keyboard patterns users already memorized, and test data from the 2024 beta showed 41 percent faster task completion than the ranked list. Owner: Sarah Chen design with review by the entire product trio. Outcome updated six weeks later: Task completion rate rose 37 percent, support tickets on findability dropped 62 percent, scoped modes now drive 68 percent of all invocations. The entry links directly to the Figma file, the beta metrics dashboard, and the follow up PR. Stripe runs similar design review docs that get referenced two years later when the payments team hits an analogous checkout flow problem. Anthropic publishes research notes that function as model level RFCs listing experiments tried, metrics collected, and exact reasons a training path got abandoned. Brian Lovin and Jordan Singer run public versions on their personal sites where every small product ships with three to five dated entries that double as both decision record and portfolio proof.

Write a Design RFC when the decision carries weight, when it will shape user experience for months, when it consumes meaningful engineering time, or when you need to defend the call in a future review or interview. Use it on new onboarding flows, navigation overhauls, design system breakpoints, pricing page layouts, or any change that touches conversion or brand voice. Write it before you open Figma. Fill the outcome field within two weeks of shipping even when the numbers look bad. Senior designers run personal RFC logs on side projects regardless of what their company does because the artifact travels with them to the next role. Do not write them for trivial icon tweaks, one off marketing assets, or pure exploration work with no ship date. Never write one if you plan to backfill the alternatives field with options you never actually considered. The practice dies the moment it turns into signaling instead of thinking. Teams that treat the RFC as optional theater watch their institutional memory leak out every time a senior leaves.

Top designers document decisions so six months later they remember why instead of what.