De-Ambiguate Upstream: The Brief as a Prompt
Design is slow only when the brief is vague; remove variables upstream like you'd add context to an AI prompt.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Design is a problem-solving methodology, so the more ambiguity you remove before it enters the process, the faster and better the output. Baxley reframes the creative brief as an AI prompt: the more specificity and context you give, the more the designer knows which swim lane to work in. Vague input isn't the designer's fault to absorb, it's the client's (usually the PM's) job to clarify, because design must convert ambiguous input into the highly specific output engineering requires.
Origin
Baxley's framing, using the script-to-storyboard-to-production film analogy and an explicit comparison to prompting a large language model.
Core principles
- 01Design is a problem-solving method; removing variables upstream makes it efficient
- 02A vague brief usually means the client isn't clear in their own head
- 03Designers take ambiguous input and must produce specific output because computers don't tolerate ambiguity
- 04Give constraints, not a tiny box: a basketball court, not an airport tarmac
- 05AI teaches the same lesson for humans: unmet outcomes mean add more context and specificity
How to run it
- 1
Get clear in your own head first
Before briefing designers, work out the vision and the specific outcome you want; a vague ask signals your own lack of clarity.
Pro tip Treat writing the brief like engineering a big AI prompt: the more context and specificity, the better the result.
Watch out If you think design will take a long time, it's often because your creative brief isn't clear.
- 2
State the problem and the emotion, not the solution
Tell the team what the feature must do, when it's needed, and what the issues are; specify the emotional response you want, then give space to solve it.
Pro tip Leaving the intended emotional response open invites ambiguity and therefore inefficiency.
Watch out Don't hand over a drawn, fully-baked sketch; it removes the designer's space and often just tells them what not to do.
- 3
Give constraints sized like a basketball court
Provide enough boundaries to focus creativity without over-constraining; not an airport tarmac, not a football field, but a court-sized space.
Pro tip Constraints are what let designers do their design thing; total openness makes them spin.
- 4
Co-create rapidly to compress ambiguity
Bring designers into a compressed PRD process with product so ambiguity is rung out collaboratively before it reaches engineering.
Pro tip Think script (words, PM's domain) then storyboard (designer's domain) then production (engineering); fixing script issues in production causes churn.
In the wild
Baxley describes how design teams routinely get extremely ambiguous asks from product, yet must hand engineering something exact because computers don't tolerate ambiguity. Time-boxed on top of that, it's not a recipe for success.
→ His conclusion: a core job of a design leader is to make PMs better clients by helping them get more specific upstream.
Common mistakes
Blaming design for being slow when the brief was vague
Ambiguous input forces designers to spin; the inefficiency traces back to the client, not the design process.
Handing over a drawn, fully-baked solution
A finished sketch from a non-designer usually just signals what not to do and removes the space to find a better answer.
Is it for you?
Best for
PMs and founders who feel design takes too long and want faster, higher-quality output.
Not ideal for
Truly novel exploration where premature specificity would prematurely collapse the solution space (pair with Delay the Primal Mark).
From the transcript
“So the more variables you can remove before they go into the process, the more efficient it's going to be”
“I think you need to work on your prompt before you go to your designers”
“design gets stuck with a really ambiguous input, but they have to have a highly specific output”
“you don't give them an airport tarmac and you don't even give them a football field”
From the episode
35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and beyond
Bob Baxley