The Design Intake & Prioritization Kit
Stop managing design requests out of your Slack DMs.
A complete set of templates, scoring tools, and operational guides that give design teams a structured, defensible way to receive, score, route, and communicate about incoming work.
- 14 files included
- Markdown + DOCX/XLSX formats
- AI Integration Guide included
- Instant download on purchase
- No subscription required
The problem
Sound familiar?
If any of these hit home, this kit was built for your team.
Requests arrive from everywhere with no standard format
Slack DMs, hallway conversations, vague emails, tickets opened directly by PMs. Each arrives with different context, different urgency assumptions, different timeline expectations. The design lead spends hours clarifying scope.
Prioritization is political, not principled
Without a scoring framework, priority defaults to whoever asked most recently, shouted loudest, or has the most leverage. Designers resent it. Stakeholders game it. The work that should get done first doesn't.
Stakeholders have no idea what happens after they submit
A request goes in, then silence. After two days, they ping the design lead. After four, the design manager. After a week, they route around design entirely. The team gets blamed for being unresponsive even when they were working on it.
Triage is ad hoc and undocumented
The design lead makes decisions from memory and instinct, with no repeatable process and no audit trail. Different requests get evaluated on different criteria. There's no way to explain why one request is behind another without sounding arbitrary.
The team keeps agreeing to work they're not the right team for
Requests arrive for things engineering can handle directly, that PM needs to scope first, or that belong in a different function entirely. Without formal routing, these absorb triage time and get abandoned mid-stream.
What's inside
14 files across 6 deliverable groups
Every deliverable ships in multiple formats. Markdown for Notion, Confluence, Linear, and GitHub. DOCX/XLSX for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. PDFs for polished reference guides.
Design Request Form
Structured intake form with fields for problem statement, business rationale, scope, constraints, timeline, and expected outcome. Built for Notion database, Confluence form, or standalone spreadsheet.
Priority Scoring Model
Five-factor scoring framework (Business Impact, User Impact, Strategic Alignment, Effort, Urgency) with a weighted formula, score bands (Critical/High/Medium/Low), and a calibration guide for setting team-specific weights.
Triage Decision Playbook
Step-by-step triage process, six routing decisions (Accept, Defer, Redirect, Break Apart, Reject, Needs More Info), SLA commitments by priority tier, and capacity check logic.
Work Queue Manager
Three-sheet workbook: Active Queue with formula-calculated composite scores, Archived Requests, and a How to Use setup guide. Tracks up to 200 requests across 18 fields.
Stakeholder Communication Templates
Ten ready-to-send templates covering acknowledgment, status updates, priority decisions, timeline changes, scope feedback, escalation responses, and a weekly queue digest.
AI Integration Guide
Two-page PDF covering AI-assisted intake in Notion AI, Linear Triage Intelligence, Jira Smart Assignments, and Slack + Zapier automation for acknowledgment and routing. Verified March 2026.
Welcome Guide
Four-page branded PDF covering what the kit is, full artifact inventory, three rollout paths by team size, and a first-week quick start.
Format guide
Why this kit
What makes it different
There are a lot of templates out there. Here's why these aren't the same thing.
Prioritization that's defensible, not just documented
The five-factor scoring model produces a number you can show a stakeholder. When the VP of Marketing asks why their project is behind the engineering-requested work, the answer isn't 'trust me'; it's a score, and the formula is shared. That's a different organizational dynamic.
Ten communication templates that close the feedback loop stakeholders never get
Most intake systems are input-only. This kit includes the output: acknowledgment within 24 hours, status updates at each queue transition, priority decision explanations, and a weekly digest format. Stakeholders who know what's happening stop routing around the team.
The routing logic prevents work that shouldn't be in the design queue
Six named routing decisions (Accept, Defer, Redirect, Break Apart, Reject, Needs More Info), with criteria for each. Redirect means 'engineering can do this without design.' Break Apart means 'this is too big to scope as submitted.' Having the vocabulary changes the conversation.
SLA commitments that set expectations before complaints are filed
The Triage Decision Playbook includes response time and delivery window commitments by priority tier. Publishing these SLAs proactively changes how stakeholders interpret silence. They know the commitment. They hold the team to it. That's accountability, not bureaucracy.
Built for Notion, Confluence, Linear, and spreadsheets equally
Every template ships in Markdown and Excel/DOCX. The Priority Scoring Model includes Notion formula syntax for auto-calculation in a database. The Work Queue Manager is an XLSX optimized for sorting and filtering, not a PDF that you glance at once.
This kit is for you if...
- Design leads personally handling all intake routing who need a defensible prioritization framework
- DesignOps practitioners standing up a request management process from scratch
- Teams of 2–15 designers whose request volume has outgrown informal coordination
- Teams that started with the Clarity Kit's intake form and need the full scoring, queue management, and stakeholder communication system
Probably not for you if...
- Teams where request intake is already working well
- Solo designers or freelancers
Where to start
Start with your sharpest pain point
Don't try to deploy everything at once. Pick the deliverable that solves your most urgent problem first.
| If your pain is... | Start with | Then add |
|---|---|---|
| "Prioritization decisions feel arbitrary to stakeholders" | Priority Scoring Model | Stakeholder Communication Templates (priority decision template) |
| "Stakeholders keep asking where their request is" | Stakeholder Communication Templates | Work Queue Manager (shared view) |
| "We're agreeing to work we shouldn't be doing" | Triage Decision Playbook | Design Request Form (scope fields) |
| "Requests arrive with no context and I spend hours clarifying" | Design Request Form | Stakeholder Communication Templates (Needs More Info template) |
| "I make all triage decisions from memory with no audit trail" | Triage Decision Playbook + Work Queue Manager | Priority Scoring Model |
Ready to stop rebuilding from scratch every time?
One purchase. 14 files. A tested starting point that collapses weeks of build time into an afternoon of adaptation.
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