Design Thinking

Chapter 2Inspirational Design Briefing

Søren Petersen

Ingomar&ingomar-consulting

Jaewoo Joo

Kookmin University

Introduction

A design brief is a short document, usually 2 to 20 pages in length, that relays issues of “who, what, when, how, and why” to the design team (Petersen & Phillips, 2011). As a written explanation of the aims and objectives of a project, the design brief represents the desired outcome by relaying requests from management to design teams. A well-written design brief enables designers to understand their clients and to communicate with other designers in a team fluently, eventually helping them to develop concepts. As concept development reflects only 5 percent of development costs, yet influences 70 percent of the final product's cost (Andreasen & Hein, 2000), using a design brief to translate management criteria into measurable and actionable design concepts is critical.

Although the design brief plays an important role in concept development, there are few resources about how to write one. In general, the design brief is viewed as a competitive advantage and traditionally is guarded as a business secret. Research on writing a design brief is scant, and prescriptions for how to organize documents are heavily based on individual consultants' experiences. As such, most design briefs are the writer's interpretation of a request for proposals (RFP) or merely a reformulation of an existing business plan (Petersen, 2011).

Design Brief and Wikipedia

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