How to write a design brief for project success
Why and how to write a perfect design brief with help of my FREE Notion template. So let’s dive in, and see the magic 🪄
Introduction
Do you know what is the secret of professional designers to start their projects strongly?
How to capture all essential elements of the project to understand needs, scope and align expectations from design to project success?
A design brief is your magical weapon to show your professionalism and get started on your project in the right way!
you might ask how? 🤔
In this article, I talk about why and how to write a perfect design brief with help of my FREE Notion template. So let’s dive in, and see the magic 🪄
Why we should write the design brief?
Writing a design brief is your first step for any UI/UX or Product design project. But most of designers struggle with why and how to write it. Let’s talk about the importance and benefits of writing design briefs. Generally, it helps you to be more creative and productive.
- 💎 By clearly understanding project requirements, objectives, constraints, and target users
- ⏱️ Make communication more effective and avoid lots of revisions and iteration
- 😀 Deliver what exactly the client wants which is to make you client satisfied
- 🚀 Increase your productivity by staying focused, prioritizing tasks, and allocate resources effectively
- 😎 Presenting a comprehensive design brief demonstrates professionalism and attention to detail, enhancing your credibility as a designer.
… and much more! what do you think?
How to write Design Brief?
Follow the step by step guide to write down your brief.
1) Download Free Notion Template
Considering all aspects of the project in the design brief can be quite challenging. But I made a Notion Design Brief template to make your life easier! if you like this magic template, you can buy me a coffee! ☕
and create a Duplicate of template to get started!
2) Write it down!
Now you have a brand new template with some question to ask your client. Next you need have a kickoff meeting with your client, to ask him/her questions that I provided in the template.
Feel free to customize it based on your project and needs. Also you can use it like a checklist to consider all aspect of project from background, market, product and design goals, like a pro! 😎
Key Sections of a Design Brief
- Project Information. quick information about the project
- Background. Why this project should exist?
- Market. All about market goals and competitors
- Product. Vision and mission of product, key UVP (unique value proposition)
- Users. Know target users, their needs, pain points and goals
- Design Goals. Design expectation, success indicator for evaluation of the design
For each section, I provided a couple of questions to understand what should ask your client.
Before the meeting make sure to review the template and make your questions ready, during the meeting also write answers in your notebook as a draft, while you can record the meeting. (always ask before recording their voice)
Finally, after the meeting, you can rewrite all of the answers in your Notion template as a live document. Might be you need multiple meetings to write your design brief completely.
3) Utilize & Update
Through project, you can always update the design brief and definitely use it as your single source of truth for upcoming steps, like user research, competitor analysis and even the look and feel of the UI design to resonate with the client’s core value or unique value proposition.
That is it! Now you’re a magician 🧙♂️🪄
Conclusion
In this article, I share my knowledge about writing design briefs. It helps you be more creative, since you clearly understand project needs you can provide better solutions and increase your productivity by staying focused, prioritizing tasks, and allocating resources effectively. Write a design brief for your next project use the template provided to streamline your project, and see the magic! ✨
Originaly this post was published in my blog post, check it out!
