In product development, new features and improvements are released daily. However, if you can’t effectively communicate their value to users, all that effort goes to waste. One of the most important touchpoints for this is the “release notes (changelog).”

This time, as we continuously create the docs.giselles.ai release notes, we thoroughly researched how excellent products around the world communicate their change history.

In this article, we’ll introduce the changelog sites that particularly impressed us and share our learnings about “what makes a good release note.”

Why Do We Care So Much About Release Notes?

Release notes are not just a record of changes.

• Communication with Users: They are the most direct evidence that your product is actively being developed and evolving.
• Conveying Value: They are a place to communicate not just “what it can do” but “why it’s useful.”
• Building Trust: By honestly communicating fixed bugs and improvements, you deepen trust with your users.

We believed that good release notes can themselves become content that enhances the product’s appeal.

Changelog Sites We Referenced

While we benchmarked many sites, here are some that particularly inspired us, organized by category.

en:

• What’s New – Notion
• Changelog · Cursor
• Changelog – Linear
• GitHub Changelog
• Changelog - Supabase
• Raycast - macOS Changelog
• Figma Release Notes
• Changelog - Vercel

ja:

• 最新情報 – Notion (ノーション)
• 変更履歴 · Cursor
• Figma製品の最新情報とリリースノート

1. Sites with Excellent UI/UX and Design

Visual beauty and a pleasant experience are crucial elements for getting users interested in the content.

• Linear: The timeline format UI that lets you experience the product’s evolution chronologically is impressive. Each item is concise, and the design that allows you to check details in a modal is excellent.
• Figma: The grid layout makes it easy to visually grasp changes, and GIF animations effectively convey new features intuitively.
• Raycast: A simple yet refined design. Change types (New, Improved, Fixed) are color-coded with tags, allowing you to grasp the overview at a glance.

From these sites, we learned the importance of “showing” rather than “making users read.” (「読ませる」のではなく「見せる」工夫)

2. Sites Focused on Developer Experience (DX)

Developer tools require accuracy and comprehensiveness of information.

• Vercel: What’s New and Changelog are separated, distinguishing major announcements from daily minor updates. It’s a great example of controlling information granularity.
• Supabase: Updates are compiled weekly and very promptly. Links to GitHub Pull Requests are often included, showing high transparency.
• GitHub: Truly a changelog for developers. The tag filtering feature is powerful, allowing you to efficiently track only the changes relevant to you.

From these sites, we gained hints about information classification, transparency, and navigation design that gives readers immediate access to the detailed information they need. (情報の分類、透明性、そして読者が求める詳細情報へすぐにアクセスできる導線設計)

3. Sites Excelling in Simplicity and Multilingual Support

When a product expands globally, language barriers cannot be ignored.

• Notion: Very simple, written in plain language that anyone can understand. The Japanese version is also naturally localized, serving as a model.
• Cursor: Simple like Notion, but the benefits of new features are expressed concisely. Multilingual support is seamless, just by switching URL paths.

These sites reminded us of the importance of avoiding jargon and communicating the “value” that features bring. (専門用語を避け、機能がもたらす「価値」を伝えること)

What We Aimed for in giselles.ai Release Notes

After the above research and analysis, we aimed to achieve the following in our giselles.ai release notes:

1. Clarity and Conciseness: We avoid jargon and keep sentences short so anyone can understand.
2. Explicit Value: We focus on communicating not just “what changed (What)” but “why it makes things better (Why).”
3. Visual Clarity: We use images and GIFs as needed to help users understand changes intuitively.
4. Consistency and Continuity: By committing to regular updates and unifying the format, we become a reliable information source that users can trust.

Release notes are not something you create once and forget. They are living documents that continue to evolve with the product. We want to keep improving them as if having a dialogue with our users.

Do you have any favorite release notes that you reference? Please let us know!

That’s all for this summary of changelog sites that inspired our English release notes for global expansion. That’s all from the Gemba!