How to design Notion databases: Bits of advice from a software engineer.

Twitter Thread:

https://twitter.com/thanghvu/status/1481981637495648259

To help keep your databases in line, here are the tips I learned after working with a lot of databases in Notion, as a software engineer.

👉 Find a consistent naming convention for your properties. This is particularly useful when you need to refer to the property in a document. For me, I always capitalize my property's first letters: My Property, and wrap it in a code snippet block (cmd + e on mac).

👉 Find a pattern that helps you quickly identify the property’s type at a glance. Some of my common patterns:

• Checkbox: True?. For example: Completed?, Started?.
• Relations: Destination Databases. For example Transactions, Wallets.

👉 Be consistent in ordering properties. My recommended order is:

• Fillable properties go first. This includes text, number, check, etc...
• Relations & Rollups: Connection with other databases.
• Formulas.

Understand the fillable & relations first before reading the formulas.

👉 Here is an example database that implements all the above consistent suggestions:

👉 Simplify the use of colors of select/multi-select. A database should only use vibrant colors on its most important select/multi-select property. Other properties should use simple colors like gray or black to avoid confusion. Example: Only Priority uses vibrant color.