1. Who is our audience, and what are their goals?

It might seem like a no-brainer, but the importance of asking this can’t be overstated. Understanding the audience and what they’re trying to achieve is the most important part of our design brief.

This is a big question, and you probably won’t get a comprehensive answer just in your initial meeting — but that’s okay for now. Try to get an initial flavour, and then go into more detail in a dedicated kick-off workshop at a later date.

There are a couple of important considerations when discussing this topic:

You need to ask the client for their understanding of the user needs, not the solution itself. Try to steer the client away from suggesting specific features or layout ideas. Coming up with the best possible solution is your job as a designer, and you don’t want to lead them down route before going through the proper process.

Try to get some understanding of priorities. The product is likely to have multiple audience types, each with several goals. Some things are going to be more important than others, and the design will need to reflect this. Playing ‘higher or lower’ with sticky notes in the meeting can sometimes help with this.