2. Briefs and specifications

Writing a design brief is an important part of a designing and making assignment. A designer's understanding of the brief grows as he or she develops design proposals in response. The intention of the brief is to provide a clear starting point for the dialogue that will take place between the designer and what is being designed.

The specification for the product being designed grows from the brief as it becomes clear exactly how the product should perform. The brief lists criteria against which emerging design proposals can be judged.
It is important that the specification is detailed enough to provide these criteria but not so detailed that it limits the designer's ability to respond creatively. It is unlikely that a student will 'get it right' at the first attempt to write a brief or specification and many students interpret the need for successive refinements as an unnecessary chore and perhaps an indication that they haven't understood what they are being asked to do.

One way to overcome these difficulties is to provide your students with the experience of writing and discussing both design briefs and specifications. The student reading defines the design brief and explains how briefs can be either open or closed giving examples of each. It provides a framework for writing specifications and gives examples.

The Resource Task SRT3 in is two parts. Part 1 gives practice at writing open and closed briefs in response to particular situations. Part 2 gives practice in developing specifications from given briefs.