Key question
What exactly is the brief?
Every project begins with a briefing: the description of what the client wants. Briefings are often incomplete. Good designers ask questions before they start designing.
Learning objective: You are able to check a briefing for completeness, ask targeted questions, and formulate a rebriefing.
A good project begins with good questions.
3.1 / What a briefing contains
Objective, target audience, message, framework.
A complete briefing answers at least the following questions:
01
Destination
What is the project intended to achieve, and how will we measure its success?
02
Target audience
Who do we want to reach, and in what situation?
03
Message
What should people understand or do?
04
Frame
Budget, deadlines, media, specifications and who decides.
If information is missing, it leads to misunderstandings, correction loops and additional costs.
What is missing from the brief will be missing from the project later on.
3.2 / Clarification and Rebriefing
A rebriefing clarifies what is missing.
Upon receiving the brief, designers formulate a rebrief: they summarise what they have understood in their own words and ask targeted questions about any open points.
The rebrief is confirmed by the client. This ensures both parties have the same foundation to refer back to later.
Confirmed in writing is better than assumed by word of mouth.
3.3 / The real problem
The order isn't always the problem.
Behind a project brief, there is often a different issue to the one first mentioned. ‘We need a new logo’ can mean: the brand feels outdated, or customers don’t understand what is on offer.
Methods from design thinking, such as asking why or holding short conversations with the target audience, help to identify the actual problem.
Ask about the why behind the what.
Exercise
Review a briefing
Task: Review a real or fictitious briefing and formulate a rebrief.
STEP 1
Read the briefing and highlight what is clear and what is unclear.
STEP 2
Check it with the briefing check.
STEP 3
Draft the rebriefing: summary and questions.
STEP 4
Role-play the conversation with the customer.
Evaluation: Which questions would have caused problems later on without a debrief?