How to write the perfect Enterprise Product Design Brief👌 - Part One
We made this guide to help you and your colleagues who are less fluent with design, frame a problem in a way that’s engaging for designers and developers.
Why enterprise UX matter?
UX is booming!
Big corporations everywhere are now user-focused. They’ve started applying user-centred designs to any and all tools that run their business. As a result, they’ve also carved out a new UX sub-discipline: Enterprise UX.
Enterprise UX is an up-and-coming field. Best practices are still emerging.
The good news!
This means you (and your colleagues) now have more talented creatives solving the problems you experience every day. There are more people around you who are familiar with UX. More people “speak” design. That’s why our goal is to improve digital experiences in the workplace so that better work is going to get done as a result.
What’s at stake here
There’s usually a larger group of people who may be able to answer your brief. But that also means there’s a greater risk of ending up with a result that isn’t quite right. Today, there’s more pressure on project owners and coordinators than ever before to define what the design brief is. And the risks of getting it wrong can be disastrous.
A good design brief sets expectations. The right expectations. It gets everyone aligned by clearly marking the boundaries of the problem and defining what success looks like. Without it, your team will waste effort and resources. They’ll lose time thinking about things that aren’t relevant or would never work.
Getting it wrong also means you have to change your mind later on. This misguides the design team and they’ll quickly start to lose interest in the middle of the project. Changing your mind makes the problem appear artificial. Overall, you will lose impact and meaning.
This epic guide is here to help
Why are we calling it epic? Because we’ve assembled straight-forward steps that you can follow to create the perfect design brief you need to spark the creativity of any designer.
And we’ve added a checklist for every step along the way.
The mindset of the UX designer
When you’re crafting a brief, you’re essentially creating a design challenge.
You’re going to learn how it’s important to describe who you’re designing for. So, let us introduce to you the typical designer. Here are their typical motivations and goals.
Designers are proud
Like everyone, designers value their time. They want to put effort into endeavours that matter.
Design is thought with intention.
Designers are curious
Curiosity is how designers understand a problem. They need to know how to identify the right answer to a problem. They get that through understanding the challenge. This is why you’re writing a brief. They need to know they can come up with the right answer, otherwise, their effort is wasted.
Designers don’t settle for half-baked solutions.
Designers are advocates
Every UX designer you work with will have a different style. There are different tools they’ll use. There are different documents they’ll make. What holds true, universally, is that the design work should trigger the desired impact on the target audience.
In Enterprise UX, these are your colleagues.
Typically this aligns with your organisation. Either the experience of employees at work is valued and there are UX teams tackling the challenges they face, or your organisation doesn’t value Enterprise UX.
It also means designers are always going to fight for the optimal experience for their target audiences. This can lead to clashes.
Keep all this in mind as you write the brief.
Make it meaningful. Designers need to understand: Why this problem and not something else?
Make it creative. Give enough room for interpretation and creativity. That’s where the magic lies.
We’ll be releasing Part two and Part three shortly.
If you simply can’t wait to read, reach out for the guidebook now! 👇
