Design Brief | Designmarketinglab

Bertao, R. A., Brum, A. L. D. S., & Joo, J. (2023) The design brief as a pivotal tool: A study of Centro Brasil Design’s practices to promote design, The Design Journal, 26 (2), 188-209.

Abstract

In the early stages of the design and innovation processes, stakeholders often develop a design brief. As a document gathering all design requirements, it is adopted as an agreement and a roadmap to facilitate communication throughout the project. This study expands the current literature about design brief tools by delving into the briefing process within design interventions conducted by design promotion organisations. We investigated the strategies and practices of Centro Brasil Design to nurture design among Brazilian enterprises. Particularly, we focused on its Design Export program, which aims to insert design in export-oriented businesses. Supported by the Design Quality Criteria framework, our study probed the program’s development and its design briefs, as well as the designers involved in the projects. The findings revealed how a design brief could lever the design advisory service. We further identified a new approach to briefing procedures and a design brief model for design interventions.

Keywords

Design brief, briefing, Design Quality Criteria, Centro Brasil Design, design promotion

Petersen, Soren and Jaewoo Joo (2015), “Inspirational Design Briefing,” in Michael G. Luchs, Scott Swan, and Abbie Griffin (ed.) Design Thinking: New Product Development Essential from the PDMA, Wiley-Blackwell, 15-26.

… 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 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)…

… The responsibility for writing a design brief is usually relegated to one department and there is little or no cross-departmental collaboration. At the Industrial Design Society of America event in 2012, for example, design students and professional designers alike voiced their concerns about the design briefs they had seen. The design briefs written by engineering departments contained too much information and were overly restrictive, whereas the design briefs written by marketing departments contained too little information and did not inspire designers. Therefore, many designers read a design brief when a project is started and rarely revisit it afterward…

1 A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN THINKING 1
Michael G. Luchs

PART I: DESIGN THINKING TOOLS 13

2 INSPIRATIONAL DESIGN BRIEFING 15
Søren Petersen, Jaewoo Joo

3 PERSONAS: POWERFUL TOOL FOR DESIGNERS 27
Robert Chen, Jeanny Liu

4 CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MAPPING: THE SPRINGBOARD TO INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS 41
Jonathan Bohlmann, John McCreery

5 DESIGN THINKING TO BRIDGE RESEARCH AND CONCEPT DESIGN 59
Lauren Weigel

6 BOOSTING CREATIVITY IN IDEA GENERATION USING DESIGN HEURISTICS 71
Colleen M. Seifert, Richard Gonzalez, Seda Yilmaz, Shanna Daly

7 THE KEY ROLES OF STORIES AND PROTOTYPES IN DESIGN THINKING 87
Mark Zeh

PART II: DESIGN THINKING WITHIN THE FIRM 105

8 INTEGRATING DESIGN INTO THE FUZZY FRONT END OF THE INNOVATION PROCESS 107
Giulia Calabretta, Gerda Gemser

9 THE ROLE OF DESIGN IN EARLY-STAGE VENTURES: HOW TO HELP START-UPS UNDERSTAND AND APPLY DESIGN PROCESSES TO NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT 125
J. D. Albert

10 DESIGN THINKING FOR NON-DESIGNERS: A GUIDE FOR TEAM TRAINING AND IMPLEMENTATION 143
Victor P. Seidel, Sebastian K. Fixson

11 DEVELOPING DESIGN THINKING: GE HEALTHCARE’S MENLO INNOVATION MODEL 157
Sarah J. S.Wilner

12 LEADING FOR A CORPORATE CULTURE OF DESIGN THINKING 173
Nathan Owen Rosenberg Sr., Marie-Caroline Chauvet, Jon S. Kleinman

13 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AS INTELLIGENCE AMPLIFICATION FOR BREAKTHROUGH INNOVATIONS 187
Vadake K. Narayanan, Gina Colarelli O’Connor

14 STRATEGICALLY EMBEDDING DESIGN THINKING IN THE FIRM 205
Pietro Micheli, Helen Perks

PART III: DESIGN THINKING FOR SPECIFIC CONTEXTS 221

15 DESIGNING SERVICES THAT SING AND DANCE 223
Marina Candi, Ahmad Beltagui

16 CAPTURING CONTEXT THROUGH SERVICE DESIGN STORIES 237
KatarinaWetter-Edman, Peter R. Magnusson

17 OPTIMAL DESIGN FOR RADICALLY NEW PRODUCTS 253
Steve Hoeffler, Michal Herzenstein, Tamar Ginzburg

18 BUSINESS MODEL DESIGN 265
John Aceti, Tony Singarayar

19 LEAN START-UP IN LARGE ENTERPRISES USING HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN THINKING: A NEW APPROACH FOR DEVELOPING TRANSFORMATIONAL AND DISRUPTIVE INNOVATIONS 281
Peter Koen

PART IV: CONSUMER RESPONSES AND VALUES 301

20 CONSUMER RESPONSE TO PRODUCT FORM 303
Mariëlle E. H. Creusen

21 DRIVERS OF DIVERSITY IN CONSUMERS’ AESTHETIC RESPONSE TO PRODUCT DESIGN 319
Adèle Gruen

22 FUTURE-FRIENDLY DESIGN: DESIGNING FOR AND WITH FUTURE CONSUMERS 333
Andy Hines

23 FACE AND INTERFACE: RICHER PRODUCT EXPERIENCES THROUGH INTEGRATED USER INTERFACE AND INDUSTRIAL DESIGN 351
Keith S. Karn

24 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION FOR DESIGNS 367
Daniel Harris Brean

25 DESIGN THINKING FOR SUSTAINABILITY 381
Rosanna Garcia, PhD, Scott Dacko, PhD

The Huffington Post article about design brief and design thinking by Soren Petersen (“How to Manage Innovation with Design Thinking”)

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Jaewoo Joo | design thinking, behavioral economics, field experiment, customer experience