What do you include in a UX design brief?
It is a question that we get asked quite often as it isn’t always clear what information should be shared for agencies to put an estimate on the work needed.
Creating an initial UX brief for discovery and discussion
To get the ball rolling we ask a series of questions that help us get an initial understanding of the needs for the project and potentially the time and budget needed.
We break these questions into 4 areas to help us uncover as much info as possible to make sure that our first (sometimes second) conversation is valuable as possible for business and agency.
Project background
Tell us about the background of your project in 3 sentences or less.
What triggered the need for this project?
Having you describe the project in your own words but in a succinct way means we get you to properly concentrate on the detail and what is really causing pain points and issues. It gives us insight into the moment you realised you need to take action and will tell us about your frustrations as well as starting to set the scene about the change you are looking to see.
Ambitions and measures
What goals are you looking to achieve?
How will you measure the success of this project?
Who are your competitors?
Here we go into more detail about the changes you are wanting to make to your product/business/organisation and where you sit within your landscape of competitors. We need to be aware as possible of direct competitors and alternatives when designing for impact. It also allows us to understand how the project is going to be measured and that those measures align with what you have identified as the goals of the project.
Design
Are there any experiences that already exist that you are looking to replicate or take inspiration from?
Would we have access to customers and stakeholder?
Is there any pre-existing research of documentation into your users that would be of benefit to the project?
Is there a brand guideline that we can work from?
Do you have brand assets that we can use or do we need to source/create these?
These set of questions really help us identify the amount of time we are going to need to budget to make your goals possible. Based on the information made available we can understand if we need to do a large piece of research to understand users and pain points or whether we are looking to bring a product up to a modern standard based on a pre-existing solution and research.
Budget and timelines
What budget do you have in mind?
What deadline are you working towards
It’s not about trying to make sure we as a business maximise on your bank account. It’s about tailoring an approach to your desired outcome with the budget and time you have available. If we know the budget and timeline, we can divide that budget up into a process that is fit for purpose, time and budget.
