Brief designers before they start

Ground design work in user context and success criteria before handoff

Kick-off conversation before designers open Figma; prevents rework by grounding design in user context, success criteria, and constraints upfront.

• · Feature brief or PRD
• · Designer name/team
• · Technical and brand constraints

• · Design Brief (MD or PDF) with: user goal, context, success criteria, constraints, edge cases, out-of-scope items
• · Reference materials (links to research, component library, competitor examples)

• · Rough feature brief or PRD exists (even notes work)
• · Designer or design team assigned

• · Brief skips emotional context (designer guesses how user feels)
• · Success criteria vague ('looks good') — designer can't evaluate their own work
• · No edge case definition — designer discovers errors after design review
• · Scope creep — no 'out of scope' section to say 'no' to mid-project requests

• · Reframes feature language into user job-to-be-done (not 'add discount field' but 'when I place order, I want to apply code')
• · Emotional state section explicitly names how user feels at this moment in journey
• · Success criteria measurable or observable (not subjective)
• · At least one edge case covers error/failure state
• · Out-of-scope section names something that might seem in scope but isn't