A design brief is itself a designed thing: an object whose purpose is to equip, inspire and empower a design team to design with maximum effectiveness.

A design brief defines a problem succinctly, precisely, comprehensively and objectively, so that the design team is clear on 1) what the designed artifact must do, 2) for what people, 3) in what contexts, 4) with what resources. It should specify 5) how proposed solutions will be assessed as successful or unsuccessful. And it should be distilled and presented so each member of the team can grok the problem as a whole, intuitively internalize it, and hold it in her mind.

Ideally a brief operationalizes a design problem, meaning the brief specifies tests to which proposed designs will be subjected, so that evaluation is detached from arbitrary, intuitive and subjective judgments of project sponsors. If objective criteria are satisfied, the problem is by definition solved.

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A design brief is the social contract of a project. It specifies the precise constraints to which the team must submit. Because the team knows exactly where it is unfree, it can confidently exercise freedom elsewhere, including discovery of new forms of freedom capable of producing new conceptions and innovations.