How to brief a design agency for B2B software
A useful brief describes the product, its users and the decision the design work should support. Screens and visual preferences can come later.
The lists below cover what a design team needs in the first week.
Key facts
- A brief for B2B software starts with the product, the user roles and the workflows that matter most to revenue or retention.
- The technical requirements of each destination (print, export, editable files) belong in the brief as well.
- Visual style, a final list of screens and detailed specifications can wait.
- On the first call, buyers usually ask about domain experience, process, communication, scope, cost, timeline and who will do the work.
What to include
- What the product does and who pays for it
- User roles, with how often each role uses the product
- The workflows that matter most to revenue or retention
- Known problems, in the words customers use
- Constraints: frontend stack, component library, deadlines, budget
- What already exists: designs, prototypes, a live product, documentation
Access, material and decisions to prepare alongside the brief are listed in What to prepare before a design engagement.
Constraints to state up front
| Constraint | Why the design team needs it early |
|---|---|
| Frontend capacity | Designs beyond what the team can build risk a partial implementation |
| Component library | Design within the library the team can maintain |
| Font licences | Some teams can use only free fonts |
| Deadlines and decision windows | Some decisions have one- or two-day windows |
| Destination of deliverables | Print needs bleed and a colour profile, editable decks need native formats, fonts need licensing checks |
What can wait
- Visual style preferences
- A final list of screens
- Detailed specifications
Specifications come later, and they need to cover behaviour as well as screens. When a specification shows only screens, states, totals and edge cases are left to interpretation.
What the first call covers
At Redbrix, work starts with correspondence, then an introductory call and a meeting. The first call usually covers the client’s domain and product, the process, communication, how the scope is formed, cost, timeline and who will work on the project. Without a detailed specification, Redbrix drafts a rough outline of what the product may need.
How the agency responds to the brief is informative too. Domain knowledge shows in the questions it asks about your data and your users, for example about partial completion, rework or how records relate to each other.