Write design brief

Skill alexe-ev/product-plugins/ux-research/skills/write-design-brief

Write a clear design brief that gives designers the problem framing, constraints, and success criteria they need to start design work. Use this skill when handing a problem from product to design for exploration.From its SKILL.md

Install

npx -y skills add alexe-ev/product-plugins --skill write-design-brief

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SKILL.md

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Write Design Brief

Purpose

Help product teams produce a design brief that enables designers to start work confidently — with a clear problem statement, known constraints, and defined success criteria — without prescribing the solution.

Skill type

Conceptual skill

Use this skill when

A product problem is being handed to design for exploration
Designers are starting work without sufficient context
Design work keeps going in the wrong direction because the brief was unclear
A design sprint or design phase needs a documented starting point

Do not use this skill when

The goal is design review or handoff to engineering (use manage-design-handoff)
Requirements need to be defined at the engineering level (use write-requirements-prd)

Required inputs

Problem to be solved
Target user or segment
Goal or desired outcome

Optional inputs

Research findings or user insights
Known constraints (technical, business, time)
Existing design patterns or system constraints
Non-goals (what design should not do)

Upstream context

Works best when:

Research insights exist
User journey is mapped or at least known for the relevant area

Downstream handoff

Output can feed:

manage-design-handoff (brief opens the design process; handoff closes it)
run-usability-testing (brief defines what the design should be tested against)

Instructions

State the problem from the user's perspective — not a solution.
Describe the target user and relevant context.
State the outcome the design should help achieve.
List known constraints: technical, time, brand, business.
List explicit non-goals — what this design effort should not address.
Define success criteria: how will the team know the design solves the problem?
Attach relevant research, data, or prior design work.

Output

Provide:

Problem statement (user-perspective)
Target user and context
Desired outcome
Constraints (technical, business, brand, time)
Non-goals
Success criteria
Supporting materials (research, data, prior design)
Open questions for the designer to explore

Risks / caveats

A brief that specifies the solution is not a brief — it's a spec
Constraints must be real — invented constraints waste design cycles
Success criteria in a brief must be UX-measurable, not just business metrics

What ships with it: 3 files

8.2 KB alongside SKILL.md

examples/

Gives 0 of the 12 instructions most docs writing skills give in 499 tokens

Counted across 1,637 of the 3,044 authors here whose files we hold, read 2026-08-07

Announce the skill at startin 54 of 1637, across 26 files
Convert legacy doc files before editingin 45 of 1637, across 7 files
Predict questions readers might askin 42 of 1637, across 4 files
Generate clarifying questions for initial contextin 42 of 1637, across 3 files
Create document scaffold with placeholder textin 42 of 1637, across 3 files
Brainstorm content options for each sectionin 42 of 1637, across 3 files
Test the document with a fresh context-less instancein 42 of 1637, across 3 files
Include exact file paths in every taskin 42 of 1637, across 15 files
Ask interview questions one at a timein 42 of 1637, across 27 files
Apply surgical edits during refinementin 41 of 1637, across 2 files
Offer structured workflow or freeformin 40 of 1637, across 1 file
Ask for document meta-contextin 40 of 1637, across 2 files

Said here and by no other author read

State the problem from the user's perspective
Describe the target user and relevant context
State the outcome the design should help achieve
List known technical, time, brand, and business constraints
List explicit non-goals
Define how the team will know the design works

Grouped from the skills themselves: near-identical wordings counted once, and counted by distinct author, so one author publishing three of these counts once. Length counted with cl100k_base; the agent that loads this file may tokenize it differently.