the brief — intro and experience snapshot
Intro
One paragraph. What this feature or system concern is, who it is for, and what makes it worth solving right now. Written before observation — the last sentence names what the brief is still waiting to witness. When discovery happens, that sentence is replaced by the opening of the Experience Snapshot.
How to apply this
- ✓ End the pre-observation Intro with the specific session planned: "This brief is waiting for: a grading session with at least one science teacher, from exam close to school submission."
- ✗ Do not include solution language. "We are building an integrated grading view" does not belong here. The solution has not been decided.
Experience Snapshot
The spine of the brief. Everything downstream is built from it. Past tense, first person, sequence of what actually happened — specific times, counts, verbatim quotes, workarounds named as workarounds.
The test: can a developer who was not in the room picture the situation without having to infer anything?
If the Snapshot was not witnessed — if it is composed from what the client said, what the team assumed, or what someone remembered — the brief is built on air. This is discovered during Execution when a developer makes an implementation decision based on what seems reasonable, and what seemed reasonable was built on an assumption the brief never named.
How to apply this
- ✓ Write from raw notes, not from memory. Memory smooths and interprets. Notes preserve the sequence and specific words that The Journey and What We Learned depend on.
- ✓ Does the Snapshot contain at least one thing that would not appear in a client interview? If every sentence could have been told to you over the phone, the observation may not have gone deep enough.
- ✗ Do not write in bullet points. The sequence of events matters. Bullets lose the cause-and-effect between one moment and the next.
- ✗ Do not interpret inside the Snapshot. The Snapshot is what happened. What We Learned is what it means. These are different sections because they are different activities.