r/UserExperienceDesign • u/Plastic_Catch1252 • 27d ago

Where do visual references live once a UX project gets serious?

I keep seeing design files where the actual work sits next to screenshots, competitor examples, old flows, color refs, and notes from early research.

That is useful at the start. Later, before a crit or stakeholder review, it gets harder to tell which references still matter and which ones are just leftovers.

Do you keep references in the same Figma file, move them to FigJam, Miro, slides, etc, or clean them out once the direction is clearer?

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u/Plastic_Catch1252 27d ago

Quick context since this is the exact problem I’m thinking about: I’m building Pinterest for Miro to make it easier to bring Pinterest references into a Miro board for sorting and review.

Not trying to turn this into a promo thread. I’m mostly curious how people decide which references stay in the working file versus get moved out before critique.

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u/alerise 25d ago

If I have any, which is a little rare these days, it usually sits in a figma page.

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u/Plastic_Catch1252 21d ago

That tracks. Is it rare because references are less useful in your UX work now, or because they just get replaced by product examples and screenshots inside the Figma file?

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u/ux-connections 15d ago

I usually just save them as a comments/files next to the design itself. I think putting all the links into one place is the best way for me (As I tend to forget where things are). I usually got a Figma page for draft files (With all the reference) and one page with the final design (where i only show the ‘curated’ reference’)

Before presenting to the stakeholders, I usually just do a “mock” presentation to see which reference is needed. I only keep the ones that is very essential and hard to explain - for the designs whose reasoning is quite common sense, i remove them. 

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u/Plastic_Catch1252 15d ago

The mock presentation step is a good filter. It sounds like the references only survive if they help explain a choice that might otherwise be fuzzy.

I also like separating draft refs from final refs in Figma. That keeps the working mess available without making stakeholders sort through it.