Design research
Build a design research library you can actually remember.
Design research starts quickly. A screenshot. A website. A pattern. A type treatment.
A competitor. A strange interaction. You keep collecting until the project moves on. Then another project needs exactly what you already found. Shelf helps you get back to it.
Research first. Organize less.
The best reference often appears when you're not ready to categorize it.
Keep it. Shelf can preserve enough meaning and context to make organization less dependent on perfect filing.
The whole loop, in five steps.
Nothing here asks you to stop and file something mid-thought.
- 01 · 01CaptureSave the references worth keeping.
- 02 · 02UnderstandLet Shelf process supported visual and textual information.
- 03 · 03ConnectSee related memories, projects and references where evidence supports the relationship.
- 04 · 04SearchReturn using the clues you remember.
- 05 · 05ReuseBring the reference back into the work.
Four searches from real research.
These are how designers describe a reference once the URL is long gone.
What you remember
Dark, dense, financial. I kept several while we were deciding on density.
Clues Shelf can use
- Dark interfaces with heavy data
- Financial vocabulary read inside the images
- Kept during the dashboard research week
- Looks like
- Dark, dense, chart-led layout.
- Text inside
- Balance, transactions and yield appear in the image.
- Context
- Sits with the rest of the dashboard research.
Kept nearby
- Dense table, quiet dividers · February
- Note: the quiet ones keep winning · February
The board groups itself.
Patterns Shelf can gather from what you kept, without you tagging any of it.
Density studies
Dark, data-heavy interfaces kept across the same fortnight.- Dark fintech dashboard
- Dense table, quiet dividers
- Analytics overview
Type direction
Display serifs and editorial layouts, kept while sizing headlines.- Editorial site, oversized serif
- Long-form article page
- Heavy type on stone
Payment flows
Checkout captures held together by what they do, not where they came from.- Orange checkout step
- Two-column checkout
- Apple Pay first step
What's doing the work.
Existing Shelf capabilities, combined around one activity.
- 01Visual memoryWhat Shelf reads inside an interface capture.
- 02Visual searchDescribe the look and get the reference.
- 03Contextual searchNarrow to the project and week it belonged to.
- 04Semantic collectionsGroups that form from what you keep.
- 05ScreenshotsThe content type most design research is made of.
- 06Design referencesThe library your taste lives in.
Client work stays on your Mac.
Design research is full of unreleased work, NDA material and competitor captures. Shelf reads it on your machine, uploads nothing, and needs no account.
Good research should outlive the project.
Keep what you found useful.
Collect the way you already do. The difference arrives on the next project, when the reference comes back.
Next thought
A reference library dies the day browsing it stops being possible and searching it never was.
Build a visual libraryKeep exploring
Shelf V3 is out now
Shelf V3 is the current build. Shelf does not use automatic updates, so download the latest build here and install it over your current version.
This is intentional. Shelf is built around a local-first, privacy-focused philosophy. An automatic updater requires additional background processes, network connections, update infrastructure, and another system with permission to modify the app. We prefer to keep Shelf’s network footprint and background activity as small as possible.
Manual updates keep the process explicit: Shelf only checks the internet when a feature actually needs it, and you decide when a new version is downloaded and installed.