Good briefing makes a good ending
I am UX Engineer and briefings are an essential part of my job. Having gained enough experience, I am sharing it with you.
For 8 years I have been developing ERP and CRM systems on the 1C:Enterprise Platform and integrating them with various services, and spent another 4 years “without code” — designing user interfaces, researches, analysis, management. I publish an approach that I use to start working on new projects.
This article will be especially useful if you are engaged in design, developing user interfaces, or try on the role of a manager.
Note. The word “project” will often appear below. By project, I mean any work related to the development and designing of a product in a digital environment.
Acquaintance
At the start, I ask a lot of questions, study the company’s experience, and note the customer’s plans for the future. It is important for me not only to get acquainted with all participants in the process, but also to understand the structure of the ecosystem I am immersed.
The interview series is the starting point of the project. I usually poll of not only decision-makers, but also a staff of departments responsible for functional equipment, development, requirements formation, and the operational component.
The purpose of acquaintance is to convince each other of serious intentions.
The purpose of the interview is to dive into the customer’s business, identify important facts, and understand the value of the product.
The result of my survey is a document with a list of goals and objectives, a description of the specifics of the project, customer’s expectations, as well as trends and current problems.
This information will allow you not only to complete ongoing tasks, but also to offer a solution with a perspective for the future.
Do not neglect the formalities
You should send the final file to the customer for review and confirmation of the information. Even the laconic reply to the letter with a summary of the document would mean “it’s a deal” and make sure that you have an understanding.
Some projects last for years, there is a regular change of personnel in the bureaucratic system, and due to the passage of time, you and your team may lose bearings. This document will help new team members get up to speed and enable you to regain control of the situation.
Through my work experience, I have created a necessary list of topics and questions for interviews when working on commercial products. I tear it from my heart ↴
Preparing for an interview
First of all, I want to warn you against a strategic mistake: never go to an interview without preparation. Find all available information about the company, its history, and its faces. If you are caught “at sea” in the material, credibility to you can significantly decrease.
Being aware of the company’s business will help you stay in context, ask the right questions, and keep quiet where necessary.
It is better to send the list of questions to the requester in advance. This way, he will get an idea of the meeting’s agenda, prepare for it, and invite the right people. It would be extremely vexing to watch the presentation from a 13-inch laptop monitor, or to hold meetings several times, repeating the information in a circle, if at the first briefing all the right people could not be gathered. Therefore, decide in advance all organizational issues: date, time, place, participants, invitations in the calendar, agenda, requests for passes, necessary equipment.
After signing the NDA, ask the customer to prepare materials for further work, for example market research, description of the target audience, brand strategy, style, etc.
NB! Do not ask people to fill out the questionnaire in writing. Even if they find the time, how will you ask clarifying questions? Personal meeting is a priority.
Drafting a brief
General information about the company
The history of the company’s launching and development, principles, mission and values, achievements and awards, the geography of presence, areas of activity, etc.
It is fine if the company’s name is “on the ear”, but customers can hardly know that initially, for example, it was engaged in the sale of expensive alcoholic beverages, and the blue color of the brand is a relic of an early orientation to corporate clients.
Add a list of links to the company’s main and additional websites and mobile apps (if any). If the company has several business lines, each of them may have website. Illustrative example: Kalashnikov concern and Disney. You should consider that the navigation on such resources is not only global within a specific site, but also universal, combining all additional sites.
Business goals, tasks and project deadlines, monetization
How exactly is the project expected to generate profits? That is for you to discover. Find out what goals does the company plan to achieve through the project (for example, a redesign) and set priorities.
You need to look into the significance of each task and figure out how to measure its feasibility. Measuring the indicators “now” and “after” will allow you to answer the counter-question “What have you done for the company?”
Examples of questions:
1. What are the challenges facing the business? What results do you expect to get from redesigning/developing your site or app?
2. What are the reasons for the redesign/development (if the product already exists)?
3. How do you attract new customers, users of the website or mobile app?
4. On average, how long it takes before the user becomes your customer?
5. What percentage of users make a second purchase?
6. What is the frequency of orders? Is this indicator different for online and offline sales?
7. How is your market developing and what is happening in it now?
8. What are the technical details of your project? What restrictions are there? What technologies and CRM do you use? Do you work with contractors or develop your own human resources inside the company?
NB! If the product is available not only online, but also offline, you should duplicate the question, because the ways of customer attraction are likely to differ significantly.
Risks
The success of a project is not only a high-quality product at the output, but also effective management, for example: the rejection of unnecessary work. Here you must prove yourself: try to expect the unexpected and foresee the danger. Usually, the manager identifies almost all the risks, but I advise you to keep an eye out.
Before adding a list of questions about identifying risks to the format of the interview, you must:
- explore the product and stages of its development independently, if it is already on the market, explore competitive products,
- read the customer’s company history from open sources; see “preparing for interview”.
The list of questions depends on the specifics of the project, but in any case, you need to find out:
- what risks can affect the project,
- what consequences can they have,
- what you can do to avoid them.
Identify the risks and describe them, evaluate the importance, probability, and consequences of each. Only then, add the information in the brief.
Processing of the results
First step: Identify the risks and describe them in the format “Risk — Why is it relevant”.
Example:
/ Risk / The customer changed the requirements and sent new introductions, but the terms remained the same.
/Why is it relevant/ We would not meet the deadline or the team would have to work overtime.
Second step: Evaluate the importance, probability, and consequences of each risk.
You can use a scale from 1 to 10 for the assessment, and then multiply the probability and impact indicators to determine the importance of the risk.
Third step: Add risks to the brief.
Constantly: If new risks arise in the course of project implementation, it is important to voice them immediately.
Well, understanding the risks will help you estimate the timing of the project realistically. For example, one company warned about possible uncontrolled and frequent changes in requirements by the HR department in advance. Therefore, at least, we have allocated more time to work with the corresponding module.
Examples of questions
1. Do others depend on the implementation of this project? If “Yes”, you need full information.
2. Name 2–3 reasons why the project time and/or volume of work may increase.
3. Who can help prevent risks and how?
Product and brand
Get as much information about the customer’s product as possible: why it is like this, how much does it cost, where it is traded, what competitive advantages and brand image it has, how people perceive it now, etc. It is important to supplement the information with measurable brand parameters, determine the sales funnel (actual and target), and identify key conditions or constraints.
Examples of questions
1. What is the main activity of your company? What is the main product? Which goods / service / category people buy more often? Which one is necessary to promote?
2. What is the USP of your product? What value for the consumer does it have?
3. Are the business processes or customer service schemes documented? If “Yes”, could we read them?
4. Is analytics-collection system connected? If “Yes”, what metrics do you monitor? Can we get access?
5. What does a standard order include?
6. Is the range of online channels different from a range of offline channels?
7. How did the product originate and develop up to date?
8. What exactly do not you like about the current site/app structure?
9. What exactly do you like (and not going to change) in the current structure of the site/app?
10. Are there any sections that will be definitely removed/added or changed?
11. Is there any suggestions for the app’s main screen/page of the site?
12. Are you planning any targeted/personalised offers?
Current problems
In this section, you will describe the reasons why the company decided to redesign or release a new product. You will also need to identify current business problems that prevent the company from achieving the desired results.
Examples of questions
1. What is the purpose of the redesign / development?
2. Is there a technical or other customer support service? If “Yes”, can we see statistics of requests?
3. Tell us about 3 of your most serious challenges. Which one is the most complicated?
4. What are the problems you are experiencing now and why?
5. What are the obstacles?
6. What helps? What does not help, why?
7. What are the top customer complaints? What about your internal clients?
8. Using a scale of 1 to 10, how satisfied are you with the current product? What do you think the product should be in order to get a 10 rating?
9. What technical problems or limitations do you face?
About 4 years ago, I developed a software package for auditing retail outlets, which included a mobile app for auditors and a web app for coordinators. The auditors checked about 10 retail outlets and transmitted data to the coordinator’s server online throughout a day. During the interview, it became clear that many retail outlets had poor Internet connection, and data exchange was either impossible or took a long time. As a result, we took care of the functionality in advance, including a deferred transmission mode with post-notification of successful delivery, and the exchange of images and videos was implemented via HSDPA. That not only solved the exchange problem, but also facilitated the data transfer channel.
Target audience
When it comes to the target audience, I try not to use the terms “consumer” and “user”, because each of its representatives, in particular, is a person.
Your customer may have already completed segmentation and target audience research. Ask for this information. Exactly for the people described in those documents you will design the interface.
Examples of questions
1. Who are your products and services are intended for? Do you work with private clients or with wholesale companies?
2. What are your clients’ needs and problems? What are they interested in, what attracts them?
3. Is there any information about the portrait of the target audience?
4. Have you conducted research on the target audience previously (online surveys, focus groups, etc.) If “Yes”, can we get an access?
5. Does your company have internal user segmentation? What are the characteristics of segmentation? Do you prioritise these segments based on profitability? Is the work carried out with each segment? How?
6. What do your customers value in your company? What do they like least? Have your clients’ expectations changed over the past N years? How do you think their expectations will change in the next 3–5 years?
7. Your point of view for the reason why customers leave you/choose competitors?
8. Do you collect analytics on customers? Which type?
9. Are there any personal suggestions or recommendations for clients? What algorithm does personalisation work by? Are you planning to change anything?
Custom script
Ask the requester to describe the script of user behavior on the site or in the mobile app. Subsequently you can have access to Google Analytics or Yandex. Metrica, you can supplement quantitative data about user behavior with information from the customer.
Examples of questions
1. Describe the most common user script.
2. Describe indirect user scripts.
3. Point out the problematic steps of the funnel. What do you think are the reasons?
4. What information do you think the people pay attention first? What is important to get across to them?
5. Is there a difference between the purchase (or behavior in general) in the online store of shopping in the offline sales outlets?
General plans of the company
You need to highlight the company’s short-term and long-term plans that may affect the project. Some of the plans can be directly connected with interface solutions and provide the basis for generating UX hypotheses, while some of them can be the subject of qualitative improvement of CX.
Examples of questions
1. What services do you plan to offer your clients in the future?
2. Are you planning to expand your product range or geographical presence?
3. Are you planning to implement a loyalty program? If “Yes”, which segments of the target audience will it cover?
Channels
Learn means of attracting and communicating of online and offline points of sale. For example, for an online food store — assortment in the discount aggregator Edadil, contact center, telegram channel, and so on. This inventory will give you an idea of the user path, allow you to plan UX research, and become valuable information when building CJM/UJM.
Examples of questions
1. How do you attract new customers?
2. Do you have a customer support service?
3. Do you have any social media accounts?
4. What advertising or PR activities are planned for the next six months/year?
Wishes
Talk to each department concerned. Their goals and interests may differ/overlap or contradict each other.
Examples of questions
1. What objectives do you pursue? Are there any KPIs generated for your direction?
2. What are the problems you want to solve?
3. Who does the content? What information will be added/removed/changed?
Competitors
Usually, the customer knows the main competitors, their major advantages and disadvantages, as well as customer trends.
Examples of questions
1. Who are your direct competitors (whose activity may have impact on your business profit)?
2. Who are your indirect competitors (working with your target audience)?
3. What are your key advantages over your competitors?
4. Did you conduct a competitive analysis? Could we see the results?
5. Who would you like to look up to and why?
6. What do you like and dislike about your competitors’ products?
Filling in and checking the brief
Here we go back to the beginning, where I said how important it is to “get the go-ahead” on the document you created. Carefully structure all the collected material and send it to the client for review and supplement.
In my experience, the more difficult it is to get to the company’s management, the more difficult and energy-consuming the project will be. Therefore, the briefing is your first compatibility test.
This concludes my story. I hope this material was useful for you. Share valuable experiences or questions that you use in your briefings in the comments.
