Juice the Brief is one of my favourite techniques for uncovering the possibilities hidden in a design brief. It’s a simple yet powerful way to stimulate creativity, generate new ideas, and explore questions that might not otherwise surface.
How to Juice the Brief: Step-by-Step Guide
To begin, you need a design brief—or at least a written description of the need or potential you’ve identified in a situation. It’s crucial that this is written down so it can be read aloud.
Next, prepare your workspace by writing the following three headings on a large sheet of paper, a flip chart, or an online whiteboard: Information, Questions, and Ideas.
Step 1: Write Down the Brief
Ensure the brief is clearly documented. This is the foundation for the process and will guide your team’s exploration.
Step 2: Read the Brief Slowly
One person reads the brief out slowly—and I mean really slowly. The goal is to give everyone listening enough time to focus on their thoughts and notice:
- Any information (e.g., design requirements, facts about the project).
- Any questions that come to mind (e.g., about the end-user, the site, or the requirements).
- Any ideas, no matter how unformed or rough, that the brief inspires.
Step 3: Extract Information, Questions, and Ideas
Listeners write down their thoughts under the corresponding headings:
- Information: Captures specific details from the brief that are important to the project.
- Questions: Identifies areas needing clarification, exploration, or further research.
- Ideas: Encourages creative sparks—small or large—that can fuel the design process.
In this divergent phase, every thought is valuable. Questions often lead to new information or ideas. Ideas inspire further questions, encouraging exploration and deeper understanding.
Why Juice the Brief
Juicing the Brief is like spinning the dense words of a brief apart in a centrifuge. It extracts the rich potential hidden within and reveals creative stimuli that might otherwise be overlooked.
The name? It wasn’t mine. This technique originally had a more formal title, but one of my trainees—whose name, alas, I don’t recall—said, “Do you juice the brief?” Yes, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
(Juicing the brief is just one of the many creative thinking tools in our conceptual design training for engineers (and other humans) at Constructivist.)