Windows, Web, iOS
Markup Library: draw once, reuse everywhere
I redesigned a markup library that lets users turn frequently drawn symbols into reusable and searchable digital assets, helping users work faster, reduce errors, and maintain consistency across documents.
Overview
Turning simple markups into a reusable system
Drawboard provides PDF markup and collaboration tools with two core products. Drawboard PDF (B2C) lets you mark up documents and share and Drawboard Projects (B2B) brings collaborative design review to architecture and engineering teams.
Originally a Drawboard Projects-only feature, I was tasked with identifying its pain points and limitations, modernising the UI, and rolling out an updated version of the Markup Library to Drawboard PDF to achieve product cohesion.
The Impact
The redesign introduce the feature to Drawboard PDF users allowing them to create once, organise and reuse their markups across multiple documents. Cloud access provided continuity across Windows, iOS, and Web, while tagging, bulk editing, enhanced search, and import/export gave users more control over their growing library.
The redesign also flowed back into Drawboard Projects with small enhancements to search, list & grid views and tag management, creating a more cohesive Markup Library experience across Drawboard's products.
Design Goal
From one-off annotations to reusable markups
The brief from the CEO was simple: “Get parity with Drawboard Projects and uplift the UI.” But with two products serving different audiences, I didn't want to assume that what worked for Projects would automatically work for PDF. My goal was to understand how Drawboard Projects currently works, how other products approached markup libraries, identify what worked and what didn't, and uncover opportunities to make the experience more useful for Drawboard PDF users. Even if the final solution ended up closely resembling Projects, I wanted to know we were getting there for the right reasons.
Rather than simply replicating the Projects experience, I wanted to understand how markup libraries worked across the market, what users valued, and where existing solutions fell short.
Research
Understanding what already worked and what didn't
Before designing the experience, I stepped back from the parity brief and approached the problem from scratch.
I audited the existing Drawboard experience (PDF and Projects), reviewed the requirements with stakeholders, and looked at how other products approached markup libraries. I wanted to understand what made these experiences useful, where they fell short, and which opportunities could make the Markup Library more intuitive and valuable for PDF users.
Drawboard Projects - current experience
Discovery insights: What makes sense for Drawboard PDF
While doing my research, I kept in mind that Drawboard Projects' main users were often professionals doing technical work, whereas Drawboard PDF targets general users. This project, in particular, focused on a new audience: university students. That being said, the key opportunities I gathered from the research included:
Bonus: Future Direction!
An opportunity discussed with stakeholders is moving beyond personal libraries to shared or curated markup collections on the marketplace. I noticed that many note-taking apps have an ecosystem of stickers and markups that users can download, which keeps users engaged with the app.
Design
Creating a system for product cohesion
One key thing I kept in mind during the design process was how Markup Library fits within the existing Drawboard design system, branding, and product holistically. I also considered how Markup Library would interact with existing tools, including the favourites toolbar, the snapshot tool, and the markup toolbar project being developed in parallel. These constraints pushed the design towards reusable UI patterns that could work beyond Markup Library and contribute to a more cohesive PDF and Projects experience.
I fleshed out each small element of the feature while getting feedback along the way
Delivery
A more capable Markup Library for Drawboard PDF
I evolved the original Projects experience into a Markup Library designed specifically for Drawboard PDF. The final experience made it easier to save, organise, search and reuse markups, while cloud access gave users continuity across devices and platforms. The result was a more capable, cohesive experience that went beyond feature parity and fit naturally into the broader PDF product.
Exploring the next chapter
As the research showed, markup collections, stickers, and a marketplace offer a significant opportunity for Drawboard. I explored a marketplace concept to push the thinking beyond the current Markup Library experience. Presented to stakeholders as an early concept, it helped put ideas on paper and open discussion about where the library could go next.
Reflection
Navigating cross-product feature and building a system
The biggest challenge for me during this project was designing with the intention of rolling out the experience back to Drawboard Projects, since I haven’t worked much with Drawboard Projects before. As the company moves toward aligning both products, I found myself needing to think more holistically and carefully about the UX and UI patterns I introduce. This project pushed me to expand my systems thinking, and in the future, I would map out the information architecture as part of my research to better understand where features converge and diverge when working with cross-product features.
