Recorded design walkthroughs: the best way to give your design a voice
How to make design work understandable with teams in different time zones
“Oh, I didn’t know there was something over there.” A PM said, after I pointed out the feature he’d been suggesting in the prototype.
That simple statement changed how I present design work, especially with asynchronous teams. It also might help you learn to present your work better. Why?
The stakeholder wasn’t confused because my prototype was bad. He was lost because I’d assumed the design would speak for itself.
It doesn’t. Designs never speak for themselves, which is why pre-presentation videos help.
The problem with links and presentation walkthroughs
As a UX team of one for much of my career, I’ve learned that doing great design work is only half the battle. How you present that work often matters more than the work itself.
“We really need to be more like designers when we design our deliverables. There is so much more compelling storytelling when we bring together the analytical view and the visuals, knowing that people respond to effective language and effective visuals to tie that whole story together. -Founder, UX Consultancy
Often, we rely on an in-meeting presentation to walk stakeholders through our process and thoughts. But you don’t always have that luxury for several reasons.
First is the aspect of time. If you’re given 15 minutes to talk about what you’ve been working on, and a demo of the prototype takes 10 minutes to walk through, you’re really only leaving 5 minutes for discussion.
It’s hard to discuss something nobody’s seen until that point. This was magnified when I was working with a team across time zones.
When half your team is in Europe or Asia, you might meet only once a week, and asynchronous communication becomes essential, not optional.
Most importantly, my audience often didn’t understand where I was coming from since they’re not designers and don’t instinctively know how to navigate a prototype.
Things like “pressing R to reset a Figma prototype” or “clicking on the screen to see interaction points” might be natural to you. But I often found myself giving a “How to use Figma” demo to many stakeholders.
The other standard option, just sending over an interactive Figma link, isn’t much better. When you hand over just a Figma link, you’re asking people to reverse-engineer your thinking.
You’re making them figure out what’s clickable, what’s important, and why any of it matters. Oftentimes, they’ll get lost or skip over details that were critical to understanding.
That’s why I started recording pre-presentation videos.
Why “Design Deliverables” Need to Include the Explanation
The traditional deliverable, such as a prototype or annotated screens, assumes shared context that often doesn’t exist. Your stakeholders need more than to see what you designed. They need to know why it matters.
More importantly, they need time to consider all aspects of your design, rather than cramming both the walkthrough and questions into a single meeting.
That’s where recorded design walkthroughs come in.
Think of it like this: would you rather:
Wander around a museum alone, trying to guess what’s significant?
Be forced into a rushed tour by a guide who needs you to act immediately?
Or have a knowledgeable guide point out interesting things in a self-paced tour?
Your stakeholders want the self-paced guided tour.
What Recording Your Presentations Actually Does
Creating a demo video alongside your design files solves multiple problems at once:
It records your thinking in advance. You capture your rationale when it’s fresh, not scrambling to remember during a meeting why you made certain decisions three weeks ago.
It becomes practice for live presentations. One of the biggest fears I hear from designers is getting caught flat-footed by an unexpected question or panicking during a presentation. Recording yourself forces you to articulate your thinking clearly. When the actual presentation comes, you’ve already done it once.
It improves the deliverable itself. Instead of handing over a fragmented collection of screens, Figma links, and more, you create one cohesive narrative. You have a main prototype, and you walk people through it with intention.
It provides context-sensitive guidance. You can point out specific interaction details, edge cases, or design decisions that people would otherwise overlook. That subtle animation that indicates a loading state? The carefully considered empty state? They’ll actually notice it now.
How to Actually Do This
It’s simpler than you think.
Open your prototype
Start screen recording (often by using company meeting software like Teams or Zoom)
Give a little bit of introductory context about you and the project
Talk through the design as if you’re presenting live, while interacting with the prototype
Send the video along with the meeting invite (and yes, still include the prototype link)
That’s it. No fancy editing required. No professional production values needed. Just you, explaining your work.
There are only a few catches:
Ensure your context aligns with your audience. If you’re presenting to an executive who hasn’t seen this product in 6 months, provide a lot more context. Alternatively, if you’re presenting to your PM who’s seen this day in and day out, one sentence of context is often enough.
Highlight questions or agenda points along the way. For example, if you want this meeting to discuss “What is the default sort we’ll have on this table?”, point that out in the walkthrough.
Ensure that people have video access through permissions! Using company meeting software like Teams can sometimes cause issues, leaving many stakeholders unable to access your video walkthroughs. Test your sharing permissions before sending.
This approach helped me during my remote work and time zone challenges, and now I do it regardless of whether my team is distributed, because it simply works better.
Designs don’t have a voice. Provide one for them.
We often treat designs like they speak for themselves, but that’s hardly the case. People need guidance on where to focus, what’s problematic, and most importantly, why your design solution can solve their problem.
A Figma link gives them the museum. A recorded walkthrough gives them the tour guide.
That opening question, “Oh, I didn’t know there was something over there”, taught me that this can often be one of the most common failures in design communication.
Don’t assume your brilliant work will be self-evident. Give it a voice. Record yourself explaining it.
Your stakeholders will thank you. Your presentations will improve. And that question that catches you off guard? You’ll have already answered it in the video.
Kai Wong is a Senior Product Designer and Data and Design newsletter author. He teaches a course, Data Informed Design: How to Show The Strategic Impact of Design Work, which helps designers communicate their value and get buy-in for ideas.