Member-only story

Creative briefs: the best way to track design projects if you’re short on time

How to provide “just enough context” for your projects

Kai Wong
UX Collective
Published in
6 min readFeb 18, 2025

A man with a microphone addressing everyone before a performance. They’re all listening as he spells out instructions for what to do next.
Photo by Matheus Bertelli: https://www.pexels.com/photo/group-of-people-standing-inside-room-2608517/

Designers often assume everyone has context, a mistake that results in a blank look when presenting your ideas.

Whether it’s an awkward silence after you present user research or executives interrupting and asking questions, you might have suffered from assuming your team has context.

That’s why taking a step back and giving more context is often a critical part of most presentations.

However, it often turns into a Goldilocks problem.

The most common mistake, especially in job interviews, is to provide too much context. But too little context doesn’t help you, either.

What’s the exact right amount of context to present your ideas? It often takes the form of a Creative Brief.

Creative briefs: a designer’s secret template

In The Design Method: A Philosophy and Process for Functional Visual Communication, Eric Karjaluto highlights how creative briefs are often one of the most versatile and powerful ways to provide context.

Create an account to read the full story.

The author made this story available to Medium members only.
If you’re new to Medium, create a new account to read this story on us.

Or, continue in mobile web

Already have an account? Sign in

Published in UX Collective

We believe designers are thinkers as much as they are makers. Curated stories on UX, Visual & Product Design. https://linktr.ee/uxc

Written by Kai Wong

7xTop writer in UX Design. UX, Data Viz, and Data. Author of Data-Informed UX Design: https://tinyurl.com/2p83hkav. Substack: https://dataanddesign.substack.com

Responses (3)

What are your thoughts?

So, if you’re wondering how to summarize your work, try leaning into briefs.

I really appreciate that you highlight the importance of the creative brief. Not only does it align the stakeholders and the designers executing on the design strategy, it also sets a baseline of various directions once iteration starts.

👏👏👏