so about 6 months ago i started screen recording every figma and photoshop session. originally it was just for provenance — wanted to be able to prove my work was actually mine if anyone ever questioned it.
but the unexpected side effect? it genuinely made me a better designer.
watching yourself work back is SO humbling lol. you see all the wasted time, the indecisive hovering over options, the 20 minute detours that lead nowhere. but you also catch these creative leaps you dont even remember making in the moment which is kind of cool.
my setup: OBS recording at 720p with 10x speedup after. one session comes out to about 200mb per hour of realtime work. i keep the last 90 days then just archive the timelapses.
bonus: clients absolutely love seeing process timelapses. started including 30 second clips in my proposals and it builds trust like nothing else. way better than just showing a final mockup.
anyone else recording their process? whats your workflow look like?
I’ve been doing this for about a year!! totally agree about the self-improvement aspect. I cringe at my early recordings but the growth is visible which is motivating.
One tip: I use Loom instead of OBS because it’s lighter on system resources. Figma already kills my RAM so having OBS running on top was causing issues. Loom records to cloud so no local storage concern either. Free tier gives you enough for this.
Procreate has this built in which is one of the reasons I love it. Every piece automatically gets a timelapse you can export. I’ve started posting them on instagram and the engagement is way higher than just posting the finished piece.
For desktop work though I havent found a great lightweight solution. OBS is powerful but yeah its resource-heavy. Might try Loom like the poster above suggested.
this is smart. not just for provenance but for portfolio differentiation too.
i started including process videos in case studies on my portfolio site last year. interview callbacks went up noticeably. hiring managers have literally told me “i could see how you think” which apparently matters more than the final output for senior roles.
one thing to watch out for: make sure you’re not accidentally recording sensitive client data, slack messages, email notifications etc. I had an embarassing moment where a timelapse included a slack notification with internal feedback about the client visible on screen for like 2 frames. nobody caught it but still…
love this idea. gonna start doing it.
question tho: do you record with audio (talking through your thinking) or just screen? i feel like narrated timelapses would be even more valuable for provenance since it shows intent and reasoning, not just cursor movement. but also talking while designing feels weird and disruptive to my flow.
@Ember_Mist_3 ooh loom is a good shout, gonna try that. my laptop sounds like a jet engine when OBS + figma are both running lol
@voidvibes92 good call about the notification thing. I actually set up a separate macOS user account just for recording sessions — no email, no slack, no notifications. bit of a hassle to switch but keeps things clean
bright puddle.15 just screen, no audio. tried narrating at first and it completely broke my concentration. I think the silent timelapse is compelling enough on its own — you can see the decision-making in the cursor movements and undo/redo patterns
slightly off topic but this also works great for billing disputes. had a client argue that a logo “only took a few hours” when i billed for 12. showed them the recording. discussion over lol.