Notion Layouts - everything you need to know
Design is one of the most crucial aspects of a software application, especially in this historical period, when software has become ubiquitous for companies and people alike. This video from Y Combinator with Stripe’s head of design Katie Dill is a great conversation on the topic.
Therefore, design sometimes acts as a differentiator in the SaaS (software-as-a-service) industry, because humans are generally naturally attracted to beauty, and though standards of beauty can differ across individuals, some core design principles are universal. The book “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman is a great read on the topic.
It is often not easy to articulate what a beautiful design looks like until we see it. Only then are we capable to make a judgment. For the majority of the times, we accept the default design of the apps we use, unless we see a better alternative.
Most SaaS companies regularly update some elements of the User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) (both essential components of design) because design trends change over time, and so do the possibilities of design customization through the code frameworks software developers use.
Notion has recently launched the ability to customize the layout of database pages (the top portion of the page). You can now group properties and create a side panel view. This makes pages look significantly more polished and well-organized compared to the previous status quo.
Layouts in Notion
In the scope of this post, a layout is the top portion of a Notion database page, where all the properties are displayed. A database is a structured collection of pages (i.e., rows). A database page (row) is an expandable canvas where you can see all the properties (columns) of the database, as well as comments (unless hidden) and the page content.
Before and after - properties view
Before the launch of Layout Builder, you could only visualize properties at the top of a page in the default vertically stacked layout. On Wikis (a special type of Notion database), you could only view properties horizontally organized. You could hide/show/hide-when-empty the properties on the layout (which you can still do).
Now, there is a brand new layout builder, and you can organize the layout in three types of elements:
Pinned: these properties (up to 4) are always displayed immediately under the page title and organized horizontally.
Property group: these properties are stacked vertically. You can create multiple property groups. Each group can contain sections. Sections are similar to toggles, allowing you to expand/collapse the underlying properties. If you create a property group that only contains relation properties, you can show them as “minimal” or “page section”.
Panel: the properties you add to the panel show up on the right sidebar of a database page when you show the panel (which is hidden by default).
An additional new feature: you can hide property icons.
How to use Layout Builder
The video above shows how to use the Notion layout builder. Here are the key things to know:
To edit the layout of all pages in a database, you can open any page and select “Customize layout” at the top, right above the page title. This will open the Notion layout builder.
You can organize properties into the three types of elements described above. Click on each element to highlight it, and select the properties to show from the dedicated right-hand sidebar.
You can create sections within property groups directly from the right-hand sidebar, via the dedicated button.
Once you have concluded organizing the page layout, you can click the blue button at the top right corner “Apply to all pages”.
Notion page layout use cases
I find that the new page layout in Notion is particularly useful on databases with more than 7-10 properties. Anything less than that, and I don’t think the new layout is necessary.
The main value of the new page layout is clarity of organization. Especially if you use master databases (which is good practice), the number of properties can get very large, and some properties may cover only some uses of a database. In that case, sections within property groups can add lots of clarity and decrease the navigation time across database pages to add or find relevant information.
For example, if you use a single database for projects and tasks, there may be some properties that are only used for projects, and some only for tasks. With the new page layout builder, you can easily group properties according to their use and easily find them when opening a page.
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