3. Evaluating the Brief

What makes a good design brief?

A design brief should primarily focus on what you aim to achieve from your product. It should not attempt to deal with the aesthetics of your design as this is the responsibility of the designer (Cass, 2008). Chapman (2011) believes that all good design briefs should include these 7 aspects; (1) Objectives and goals of the new design, (2) budget and schedule, (3) target audience, (4) scope of the project, (5) available materials/required materials, (6) overall style/look and (7) any definite “do nots”.

Creating a design brief can be fairly difficult. It is important to be clear, concise and detail as much information as possible. Ultimately the design brief is the responsibility of the client. Eberly (2011) believes this to be true stating that “a designer is only as good as the brief he/she works from”.

For this project the designer and client (Charlotte Robinson) were asked to create a wireframe for each other, based on a brief they had written. As you can see from above both design briefs were fairly limited in terms of information. Neither of the briefs included the aims and objectives for the website, and both focused on the aesthetics. Both the designer and client assumed that the other had prior knowledge and understanding of their business goals as they were similar (freelance production). This assumption paired with the lack of detail in the brief, made it difficult to understand one another’s needs. This resulted in both parties creating wireframes that suited their own needs rather than one another’s.

When creating Charlotte’s wireframe, the designer struggled with the limited brief. The client stated in the brief to include, portfolio of work, about me section, contact details and social media links. All of these features are staple and some what obvious features for a website, rendering the brief slightly useless. The only thing the designer was able to take away from the brief was that the client wanted was a minimal colour scheme and most of the elements to feature on the homepage.

The designer featured the portfolio on the homepage even though the client brief stated ‘link to portfolio on homepage’. The designer’s brief on the other hand states that ‘the homepage should feature examples of visual work’. The designers aim was to showcase her best work in a visual way rather than written. Charlotte’s aim on the other hand may have been to promote herself verbally rather than visually. However, because this was not stated in the brief the designer was unsure and made a judgement call based on her own assumptions.

Overall both briefs would have benefitted from a higher level of detail and more information regarding the purpose of the website.

References:

Cass, J. (2008). How To Write An Effective Design Brief and Get The Design You Want! | JUST™ Creative. [online] JUST™ Creative. Available at: http://justcreative.com/2008/09/26/how-to-write-an-effective-design-brief/ [Accessed 2 Mar. 2016].
Chapman, C. (2011). 7 basics to create a good design brief. [online] Webdesigner Depot. Available at: http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/03/7-basics-to-create-a-good-design-brief/ [Accessed 2 Mar. 2016].
Eberly, M. (2011). The importance of a design brief - puntografix - Mike Eberly's creative studio. [online] puntografix - Mike Eberly's creative studio. Available at: http://www.puntografix.com/blog/design-brief/ [Accessed 2 Mar. 2016].