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Exploring the “what ifs…?” of the user experience is the best way to avoid the “if onlys…” once the project is completed. And working with the client to prepare and approve an experience brief is the best opportunity to ask important questions about the fundamental underpinnings of a project, including audience, message, and purpose.

Here’s a quick look at other people’s briefs. No jokes, please.

The Creative Brief
Ad agencies produce a Creative Brief at the earliest possible point in the project. The brief serves as an important internal document that helps the agency’s account teams and creative teams work together more effectively. It’s important to note that the creative brief doesn’t propose any creative approaches. In fact, the creative team is usually not involved in the drafting of the creative brief. The purpose of the creative brief is to give the creative team a reference point for developing a solution.

The Organizational Brief
I came across this post recently and thought it offered a lot of valuable insight. The author, MJ Braide, has developed (and trademarked) the Organizational Brief as a method for companies to align their organizations to their brand strategies. A website redesign can trigger a lot of questions about an organization’s core business models, product lines, and go-to-market strategies. This is especially true for companies that have experienced a recent merger or acquisition: the pressure is on to upgrade the website, even if the organization is still be taking shape (or shaking out).

The Experience Brief
Braide follows up with another good post about the Experience Brief as a tool for effective brand management. Like a Creative Brief, an Experience Brief can foster a better working relationship between client, agency, and team members. In our business, I think a tool like this could help our clients think in terms of “designing a user experience” rather than “designing a website.”

We can tailor an Experience Brief to inform all aspects of Experience Design, including Information Architecture, Content Strategy, User Research, Nomenclature, Visual Design, and Application Design. Because so many disciplines are involved in designing the user experience, there has to be a common point of reference for everyone. Having a brief in hand can prevent the gradual drift away from the original goals as individual interpretations and small variations build one upon the other.

Brand Agencies (and consultants like Braide) usually equate “User Experience” with “Brand Experience” and rely on brand attributes and messaging to define the user experience. From the Interbrand Brand Glossary:

Experience: This is when consumers have been exposed to various brand attributes. A successful brand experience happens with exposure to a brand’s most positive aspects, and this can happen in a store, through advertising and websites, or through word of mouth. The critical aspect is to have the experience match or exceed the customer’s expectations based on promises made in communications.

Messages set expectations; content satisfies expectations. At a strategic level, the Experience Brief balances the user’s needs and expectations with the company’s messages and brand attributes. It also provides a tactical framework for making decisions about content, navigation, and design at every phase of the project and serves as a benchmark for evaluating the outcome.

Tags: Branding, Content Strategy, Experience Brief, Interbrand, User Experience

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 3rd, 2008 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Content Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.