I first learned about design briefs on my second year of university during a marketing class. The professor at the time only briefly touched on the subject then moved onto the next thing, but to me, the idea of having a comprehensive file with all the important information sounded like heaven.

To be able to check if I was missing something, or to make sure that a decision I just made aligned with the business goals and objectives improved two big things:

I became more productive and less prone to procrastination.
It helped me get better at designing with the added bonus of boosting my grades.

And maybe the most important benefit that actually kickstarted my freelance career:

As a newly graduated student looking for an internship, it set me apart from other candidates and landed me my dream internship where I made the connections that got me all of my first clients.

Now, I did not landed the internship because I had a design brief on each and every case study on my portfolio. It set me apart because the brief informed all my decisions and it was reflected whenever I explained why I decided to do one thing instead of another.

But… What is a design brief?

A design brief it’s a comprehensive document that defines the objectives, deliverables, project workflow and expectations between the designer and the client. Most designers only come in contact with one when they start working on a project.

So… What are the benefits?

There are many benefits to design briefs but here are the main reasons I wanted to share this with you:

It Helps deciding what research method is better (I struggled with this a lot).
Makes things more specific and define so you don’t drown on a sea of “what ifs”.
If you later decide to include the case study on your online portfolio, you can use this to help you decide what can go on it. Additionally, if you want to create a process deck it helps just the same.

Great!… how can I make one?

I often refer to a design brief as a list of questions to answer. Normally a design brief can be as detailed as knowing what information will go on the website or app and who will write it. You can download the template I use at the end.

For the sake of simplicity since this design brief will be for learning and practicing purposes, here are the main areas you should cover when writing your own:

1. About the Company

What goes on it: In this section you should write a very short introduction to the company, how big or small they are, the industry they belong to, their mission or vision. You can be as broad or narrow as you want.

How will this help me: If you are redesigning an existing product is a good idea to give context about the company.

2. The project

What goes on it: This space is for you to set exactly what you need to resolve and introduce the issue at hand. What does the company needs and why as well as what does the users need and why.

How will this help me: It’s important to clarify if the case study is about a real project, school project, personal project or a redesign of an existing product. You can also use this section to explain why you are redesigning if that’s the case.

3. Objectives

What goes on it: What are the goals that you want to reach with the project? It may seem pointless but what I like about objectives is that they give you clarity on why a specific idea you have may not be the best.

How will this help me: It will keep you focused on the problem you need to solve rather than overgrowing the project and adding a lot of, perhaps cool, but unnecessary features that don’t do anything to address the issue.

This is not to say your project cannot grow and evolve. However, defining objectives will stop you from jumping from one idea to another without direction.

4. The Scope

What goes on it: The list of features you’ll be working with and what you need for those features to be functional. If this is a news app, what content will go on it? Define the information, images, illustrations, videos, etc.

How will this help me: You can use the Eisenhower Decision Matrix and the information in this section to prioritise the right features that resolve the user’s pain points and what others can be worked on later.

“But I won’t work on it later, this is for an app that won’t exist” Yes, but it’s important that you still very clearly define what it is that you’re going to work on right now so your case study doesn’t end up disconnected from the problem.

5. Definition of Success

What goes on it: Think about the objectives you have set up for the project and then try to come up with ways of figure out if they were met.

How will this help me: This is to me, the most important section to ensure I don’t endlessly work on a project that is already finished. For personal case studies I’ve used it so when I test the prototype I would know if the end result was successful or not.

6. Target Audience

What goes on it: Remember this brief is done before you start working on a project to give you a clear direction of what you should focus on and what are your limits.

At this point all you need to know is as little as their age group, a few characteristics of their lifestyle and other ethnographic details if they are relevant to the product.

How will this help me: Even if your target audience is not very detailed and specific, it will help you outline and better define the user groups you will be working with.

Ideally you will do real user research even if the product will never see the light of day. If you don’t get to do real user research, don’t worry, you can place yourself as the target audience and use your own real experiences to inform your design.

7. Deadline

What goes on it: Sketch out a rough idea of how the steps you need to do and how long you think it will take you to do them and there you have it, the project deadline and the time-frame to put on your portfolio.

If you want to be super detailed you can even create a project timeline with all the deliverables and tasks and how much time you’ll spend on each.

How will this help me: This has saved me from burn out and self-sabotage many, many times. You often think something will take less or more than it actually will.

This is a good guide to keep yourself on track and a great learning experience for when you work in real life projects with tight deadlines or if you are not use to manage your own time.

8. Budget

What goes on it: I bet you didn’t think of this one. While it’s not an absolute necessity and most of the time personal projects do not need this section, it can come in handy if you decide to conduct interviews or have to visit somewhere to gather information.

You can list all the transportation expenses and incentives you are willing to give in order to attract users for your research.

How will this help me: It’s good practice to try to always work with real insights from real users and sometimes finding people willing to sit with you for an hour for free can be challenging. I had given Starbucks gift cards in the past in exchange for user testing or interviews and the results have been more real and rich.

I encourage you to use this section anyway, more often than not, the size of a budget can be a challenge within the problem itself. You won’t be able to conduct all the research you want and when that happens it’s when you have to get creative and resourceful. When you’re working on real life projects you have to be able to improvise.

9. Deliverables

What goes on it: This last section it’s informed and depends on the deadline you set for yourself as well as the scope. If you decided to create a project timeline you already know all the deliverables you need. If on the contrary you only set a couple of months, take a look at the scope and try to think what makes sense for the product and what can realistically get done within that timeframe.

How will this help me: This happens a lot with new UX designers and it’s the misconception that for every project you have to do everything. User interviews, personas, affinity maps, user journeys, service blueprints, wireframes, you get the idea.

In reality and depending on where you work, you won’t be able to and for some projects it won’t make sense to do certain steps. The personas that really helped in one project could be a waste of time for another.

Remember!

You don’t have to follow this guide to a T. You don’t have to marry any of the steps. If having a budget makes no sense for your case study, ignore it. This is meant to guide you to set yourself up for success before you start working on the project itself.

If you try it and it confuses you, leave it aside, then come back to it later. Think of it as a guiding light, UX Design is a very messy process of doing things over and over again until you finally get it.

You can download a PDF version of the template here. If you read this far and/or used the template let me know what you think in the comments!

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