How I conduct a design briefing with new projects

Let’s go through all the stages of the briefing.

Conduct briefing. The Illustration source is icons8.com

Introduction

When a designer starts working with a new client, it’s crucial to give a quality briefing on the project.

Each project is unique and each requires an individual approach. I want to share with you basic, introductory questions that I always use to give an effective briefing.

I think business has only two goals when coming to a designer — to save or make money. To save money — to optimize the employee’s work process in a way that will allow him to carry out a bigger workload, maintaining its quality, but at a particular time. To make money — to create a new/improve an old feature, that will affect the increase in users, and the income respectively. And my goal as a designer is to figure out what he wants to capitalize on and to save on.

A briefing is the first meeting with a client, during which the designer gets to know the client and his product. A client’s briefing — to find out as many requirements as possible for the project, estimation, and further work.

I familiarize myself in detail with the client’s platform/app/website before the briefing to be able to ask appropriate questions during the meeting, based on 1) the client’s answers, 2) information, that I have been able to find on the project’s website/platform.

This article will be useful for all designers, who have no experience in a briefing for a project, and to those, who would like to perfect this process, by learning a couple of interesting questions for the client.

Writing out briefing’s goals

To draft a briefing, you need to know the goal behind it. Here’s a list of what I mainly try to find out during a meeting with a client:

• Technical description of the task — what kind of project this is, what business goals and documentation does the client have (brand book, customer service documentation)
• Workload — to collect as much information as possible, taking into consideration any pitfalls (very often, I need 3–5 days to sort out each task separately and to write out my design-estimation).
• Time for the project — what is the deadline for the design, how much time has been set aside for the developers, how much time is left for testing. With whom will the designer be working? Is it one person or multiple people (discussion and approval of the concepts). In most cases, the more people are approving the design, the longer the designing process takes.

Briefing for a website’s design

General information

1. What is the name of your company/project? Do you have a slogan?
2. Who is responsible for deciding on the project? Please, provide contact information of that person/people (an email address, a phone number, and Skype are enough).
3. What is the planned deadline? How much time has been set aside for the design? Will the designer be working with a business analytic, marketers, or product owner?
4. Who are your main competitors? What makes you different? What kind of advantages do you have over your competitors? What do your competitors have and you don’t?
5. Please, provide a thematic list of websites that you like.
6. What are the goals of the new website? What do you dislike about the old one (if it’s redesign)?
7. What technology will you be using on the new website?

Current website

1. Which particular parts of the current website do you find successful? Why are they successful?
2. What are the main downsides of the current website?
3. Have you conducted research or collected customer reviews about your website? If yes, then when was the research conducted, how long ago? Can I talk to people that have conducted the research before? Please, send me the results.
4. How important is your current logo, the color scheme? Do you have a brand book or any other documents, describing your company’s style? If yes, please provide them.
5. What do you want to focus more on when designing your site?

Reasons for a redesign (if it’s redesign)

1. What are the main reasons for redesigning your website?
2. What are your business goals in creating a new website? Main and secondary. Please, describe long- and short-term goals.
3. What is the main purpose of the website? How will you be estimating its success?
4. Are there any strategies for the website’s development? What are they?

Audience

1. Describe the typical visitors on your website?
2. How often do people visit your website?
3. What are some other websites that your users visit? (Describe it in as much detail as possible)
4. What are the main and the secondary challenges that the user resolves with the help of your website? (shopping, becoming a participant of the promotion, searching for information…)?
5. Why should I use your website, but not your competitor’s website?
6. What is the current site traffic? What are your traffic goals after the redesign? (Open access to Analytics data)
7. Do you have any special offers for regular users?

Contents

1. Will this site use existing content from the current website? If so, which one? Give the contacts of the person who will provide the content.
2. What sections should the website include?
3. Describe visual elements or contents, that must be used from your current website or marketing materials (logo, color scheme navigation, structure…).
4. Do you need a design system?
5. Are you planning on using animation on the project? What kind? Provide links to the websites, animation in which you like.

Marketing

1. How do most people find out about your website? What methods of engaging the audience are being used?
2. What are your short-term marketing plans?
3. Do you have any existing or planned marketing strategies to support your website? If yes, please describe them.
4. How often will new content be added to the website?
5. What is the approximate monetization of the website?
6. Do you have any social media accounts?
7. What is your strategy on social media?
8. Should a banner or a promo be on the website?

My style of briefing

The Illustration source is icons8.com

1. Introduce myself and indicate my position.
2. Discussion in general terms of the project (General information).
3. Discussing full information about the product, its specificities, how the business model works, who are the competitors, and what strengths and weaknesses do they have, who are the users (Current website, reasons for redesign, audience).
4. Discussing the contents of the website/platform (Contents).
5. Product promotion. What is their site promotion model, where and how it will be advertised, find out the sources of advertising? (Marketing)
6. Request the provision of existing materials from the client (brand book, Figma/Sketch files-if this is a redesign and another designer has already created a certain amount of work before me). (Marketing)
7. Finding out when the developers begin their part and ask their contacts to organize a meeting with a client and the developers to resolve all open questions about the project design (which editor to use to provide layouts, where to keep the documentation, etc.).
8. Talking about further actions and arranging the next meeting.

Advice

1. Don’t be afraid to ask twice or to clarify any questions, it’s better to spend 30 minutes on figuring out than to make a design wrong and be forced to redo it in several days.
2. Don’t interrupt the client and after they have finished talking, make a pause for 1–2 seconds. This will help to understand if the person has finished speaking, this I will certainly know that I won’t interrupt them. I try to make every customer feel heard so that they will be able to convey their message.
3. I write down the main points in my notebook+ make a full audio recording of the meeting.

What’s next

I create meeting notes with all client’s data and their team’s data as well, describe what topics have been covered, what is under consideration, the meeting’s goal, what issues have been brought up, what needs more focus during the project development.

I need 4–5 days to process the information, that means:

• working with all of the customer’s requests
• familiarizing myself with the client’s documentation
• design estimation
• discussion of the design development process with the developers

After that, we chat with the customer, and I provide him with full information on the scope of work. We settle all the remaining uncovered issues and I get to work.

In total

Effective briefing depends on the designer’s readiness for the meeting, as well as on general and clarifying questions. It is important to familiarize yourself with the project you will be working on in advance to gain a deeper understanding of the product. Do not forget to think through the flow of your meeting, clearly follow the goals that you have also defined in advance. Carefully study the information received after the meeting and be sure to document it.