UX Project Canvas Template
Visualize the big picture of your UX and design projects
About the UX Project Canvas template
What is a UX project canvas?
Inspired by Alexander Osterwalder's 2005 business model canvas, the project canvas will help your team visualize the big picture of your UX and design projects, providing a convenient structure that holds all of your important data.
This project canvas was created by Jim Kalbach, author and UX designer who has worked with Citrix, Elsevier Science, and other large international companies. According to Kalbach, the project canvas is designed to make an otherwise dry topic—defining a project—lively and engaging. It allows your team to visualize key elements defining a project in a single grid.
Advantages of using a UX project canvas
The UX project canvas is an innovative tool that helps transform an idea into a project plan, and stimulates collaboration and communication between all involved parties (project team, sponsor, stakeholders, etc.). The clear one-page overview provides insight into interactions between the different project topics (scope, time, cost, risk, team, etc.).
Unlike alternative models, the project canvas is a simple interface. There are few startup costs, and employees can easily be brought up to speed to start using the canvas quickly.
When to use a UX project canvas
The UX project canvas is an effective tool whether your team is working on a new UX or design project, or wants to structure an existing one. The project canvas is useful for project managers, designers, content managers, UX/UI specialists, developers, and client representatives. You can use the canvas whenever you need to quickly bring a teammate up to speed on a project, plan a new project, consult with stakeholders, or iterate.
Here are the five factors of a successful project canvas:
What is the nature of the project? Describe it in as much detail as you can.
Why do you need to complete this project? Tie the project to your business goals and team objectives.
Who do you need to help you complete the project? List any stakeholders or subject matter experts to consult with throughout the project.
When should the project be completed? What does the timeline look like?
How do you plan on getting the project done? List steps throughout the process.
Create your own UX project canvas
Miro’s whiteboard tool is perfect for creating and sharing your project canvas. Get started by selecting this quick and easy UX Project Canvas template.
Get started with this template right now. It’s free
App Development Canvas
Ever noticed that building a successful app requires lots of players and moving parts? If you’re a project manager, you definitely have. Lucky for you, an app development canvas will let you own and optimize the entire process. It features 18 boxes, each one focusing on a key aspect of app development, giving you a big-picture view. That way you can fine-tune processes and get ahead of potential problems along the way—resulting in a smoother path and a better, tighter product.
Production Workflow
Whether you’re producing a podcast, a marketing campaign, a TV show, or a piece of content, establishing a production workflow is crucial. A production workflow creates a visual guide to the different steps in a process. It can be used to train new team members or give a high-level overview to stakeholders. Although production workflows vary by team and business, they generally contain information about who the stakeholders are, how you brainstorm ideas, what your timeline looks like, and what resources you need to succeed.
Online Sketching
Before you go full steam ahead with a promising idea, look at it from a high level — to know how it functions and how well it meets your goals. That’s what sketches do. This template gives you a powerful remote collaboration tool for the initial stages of prototyping, whether you’re sketching out web pages and mobile apps, designing logos, or planning events. Then you can easily share your sketch with your team, and save each stage of your sketch before changing it and building on it.
Target Audience
The Target Audience template helps you to understand your potential customers. Who is interested in your company or service? What types of people might buy your product? How can you market to them effectively? Target audience analysis involves describing your audience in terms of a variety of demographics, including age and gender, as well as income, education, and location, or psychographics like interests and opinions. Analyzing your target audience provides valuable insights for most business functions.
Lean Canvas
Business opportunities can get dense, cumbersome, and complex, and evaluating them can be a real challenge. Let a lean canvas streamline things and break down your business idea for you and your team. A great tool or entrepreneurs and emerging businesses, this one-page business model gives you an easy, high-level view of your idea — so you can stay focused on overall strategy, identify potential threats and opportunities, and brainstorm the various factors at play in determining your potential profitability in an industry.
Product Roadmap
Product development roadmaps cover everything your team needs to achieve when delivering a product from concept to market launch. Your product development roadmap is also a team alignment tool that offers guidance and leadership to help your team focus on balancing product innovation and meeting your customer’s needs. Investing time in creating a roadmap focused on your product development phases helps your team communicate a vision to business leaders, designers, developers, project managers, marketers, and anyone else who influences meeting team goals.