The Brief Template We Actually Use

We've used a lot of brief templates. Most ran to six pages and asked for budgets, timelines and brand adjectives. People filled them in the way you fill in a tax form. This one is a single page, and it gets better answers.

You may copy it. Here are the sections, in order, with the reasons.

The sections

1. The place. An address, a few photographs, and one sentence on what you like least about it.

2. The people. Who uses it, how many, and who uses it most. Not a persona. A name if you have one.

3. The week. Describe a normal Tuesday in the space. People rarely do this, and it shows more than any list of requirements.

4. The three words. Pick three words for how it should feel. Then cross out one.

5. The one thing. If the project could do only one thing well, what is it?

6. The limit. A budget range, a date, anything that cannot move.

7. The worry. What would make you regret the project?

Why the Tuesday matters

Section three is the strongest. If a client writes "the team arrives at 8:30, makes tea, argues about the thermostat and gets on with it", we can design for the tea and the thermostat. If they write "a modern collaborative workspace", we get nothing.

A client once described her Tuesday as "the post arrives and I put it on the stairs". We built her a shelf in the hall. She cried a little. I'm not exaggerating much.

Two small tricks

Why we cross out a word. Three words is already tight. Cutting it to two forces a priority. People write "warm, modern, practical" and then discover that modern was a reflex. Without it, the brief has a spine.

The blank lines. We leave generous blank space after each question, more than anyone needs. The empty room invites a longer answer. We've noticed that people write more when the space is bigger, and write better when they've been told they can leave a section empty.

An empty section is also information. If someone can't answer "the one thing", they haven't decided, and that's a conversation worth having early.

What we dropped

• Brand adjectives. They produce brand adjectives.

• A mood board. Useful later, misleading first. Everybody pins the same eleven rooms.

• A full budget line by line. We ask for a range and a ceiling. Details come once we know the plan.

Using it

Send it before the first meeting and ask for it back handwritten if possible. Scan it. Read it twice. At the meeting, don't mention the form. Talk about the Tuesday.

If you're a client reading this, you can use the template for yourself. Fill it in on a quiet evening, leave the tricky bits blank, and bring it to whoever is going to build. You'll start the project knowing more than most.