A couple of D4D students have asked for an example design brief. The design brief itself isn’t something that we normally do at thoughtbot on our projects because they are all things that we flush out during our kick off and it is on our minds throughout our process. But we will have it documented in other ways. I ask students to do these because it makes it explicit who and what you are designing. It acts like a very very brief kickoff.
It just so happens I am in the middle of another redesign of my personal site so I figured it would be good to use as an example.
Using this as the structure: https://learn.thoughtbot.com/design-for-developers-resources/brief
A brief summary of the business / site goals.
The focus for the redesign is to make myself a better writer by forcing myself to write more and have that writing be in the public eye. The site should be easy to post regularly to and even easier to read.
The key users.
Me: I need to make sure that the design encourages me to write, read what I write and then write more.
Other readers: Need to be able to come to my site and quickly read my writing and be able to leave feedback on that writing. They will most likely be people of the web community.
Scenarios in which your app or site will be used.
I will write in various other apps and post easily to my site. Once its on my site, I should easily be able to read, edit and take note of how much I wrote. At a quick glance I should be able to see how often I am posting so that I can judge easily if I am achieving my writing goals.
Design style principles to follow.
- Quiet / Calm
- Disciplined
- Impersonal (The design should let the writing add the personality)
