How to Write a Design Brief

Introduction

A Design Brief is this handy, lightweight one-pager that a product designer can leverage to kick-start research and other investigations into a potential opportunity.

In the past, it has been mainly used by marketing and branding design teams to quickly get on the same page with other functions in the marketing organization. I still think it has its place, and you can pull out this template when you think it fits the audience and organization you might be working in.

I've used it myself when I get the sense there is a lot of ambiguity in a potential project. I want to gently probe how comfortable other folks feel about the opportunity and the potential impact of this opportunity.

The Design Brief Template

How to Use the Design Brief with AI (LLM)

Gone are the days when you start from scratch and start with a blank template. Whatever project you are working on, there is a good chance someone has already written about the opportunity you are investigating.

AI prompts:

• Upload previously written documentation about the opportunity you are pursuing to your LLM.
• Upload the Design Brief template to your LLM.
• Now, ask your LLM to answer all the questions in the Design Brief template and complete it for you.
• Ask to export in your preferred file format.
• Now, you have a baseline version of the Design Brief that is ready for review with your teammates.

Summary

A seasoned designer operates in a process they have refined over the years. Having templates like the Design Brief at your disposal gives you flexibility in responding to different types of projects. This is one more template to add to your folder for when the time comes when you want an easy one-pager that you can pull out during a meeting.

Written by Leo Vroegindewey, B2B CX Consultant

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