Templates for framing, audience, and the brief

Every template here is printed in a book you were assigned. Nothing on this sheet was invented for class. Where a template has a fill-in-the-blank form, the form is quoted exactly as the author wrote it, and the worked examples are the authors' own.

Use it as a reference, not a recipe. Davis says it plainly about his own framework: "It is important to state that the creative strategy framework is not a template, formula, or recipe." The forms are here to keep you from staring at a blank page, not to write the thing for you.

The sheet runs in the order you will need it.

The blank sheets

Three of these templates exist as printable sheets. All three are US Letter portrait, so they print as one job with no orientation fiddling, and everything sits inside a half-inch margin so no printer clips them.

Print all three at once from docs/courses/print/ART-418-worksheets.pdf, or take them one at a time as SVG from this folder. Or draw them. Four boxes on notebook paper works exactly as well.

• problem-framing-canvas.svg. The four boxes, letter landscape. Use it in pairs before you write anything.
• five-whys-ladder.svg. The descent, letter portrait, with a tick box on each rung so you can mark the one you are choosing.
• problem-statement-check.svg. The sentence, then the six traps as a checklist. Use it on your own draft, or swap with a partner and run it on theirs.

1. The problem statement

Due Monday, September 14. Read for it: Brown, chapter 2.

Start on the canvas, not on the sentence

A canvas is a checklist laid out so more than one person can work on it at once. You can fill a checklist alone at a laptop. A canvas goes on a wall or a sheet of paper between two people, and the empty boxes make it obvious what nobody has answered yet.

Use the one from the Atlassian Team Playbook. Four boxes, thirty minutes, three to ten people. It is free, it is used inside a company of thousands of engineers, and you can redraw it from memory on a napkin.

How to run it, which is the same whether you are in class or in a job:

1. Set the stage, 2 minutes. Say out loud that the goal is understanding, not solving. Someone will propose a solution in the first four minutes anyway. Write it on the side of the page and come back to the boxes.
2. Fill the boxes, 10 minutes. Everything goes somewhere. Thin boxes are information, not failure. A box you cannot fill is a research question, and that is exactly what Wednesday's workshop is for.
3. Write one statement, 10 minutes. One sentence that carries all four boxes. Not four sentences.

The fourth box is the one everybody skips, and it is the one that pays. "In what circumstances does it not occur" is a diagnostic. If your problem happens to everyone, everywhere, always, you have written a topic rather than a problem. If it happens on phones but not laptops, in the first week but not the third, to new hires but not veterans, then you have found the edge of the thing, and the edge is where the design lives.

Now compare the four boxes to your September 14 assignment, which asks for "who has it and how you know, what it is and what signs show it, why it is worth solving and what it costs unsolved, and where it shows up." Same four questions, same order. The assignment is this canvas. Fill it in and you have written most of the deliverable.

The form

Dan Brown, Practical Design Discovery, chapter 2, page 19:

[Users] must have [need] to achieve [objective].

He is strict about the first slot. His own note: "I like being specific with each of these, so users isn't just 'association members,' but 'members unfamiliar with the inner workings of the organization.'"

Compare it to the point-of-view form from class:

This person needs to because .

Same sentence, different emphasis. Brown's third slot is the objective, what they are trying to accomplish. The d.school's third slot is the insight, what you learned that explains why they are stuck. Either is defensible. Write both and keep the one that survives a question.

The same problem, framed four ways

Brown frames one situation, a professional association whose website search is failing, four different ways in chapter 2. Read all four before you write yours. They are not four topics. They are four framings of one problem, and each one lets you design something different.

As a plain statement (page 18):

Association members are frustrated with the site's search results, because they display out-of-date information and promote irrelevant matches from a narrow slice of the site's content.

As a news story, a method he calls "pretending to be a reporter" (page 18):

The ABC Guild provides up-to-date industry data, job postings, and event information for its members. Members find the Guild's search engine difficult to use and rely on Google to find content. Suffering from poor content strategy and outdated user priorities, the organization's search engine doesn't allow users to search across the range of Guild websites. Since many members are logged in when they use it, they expect the search engine to anticipate their needs, interests, and geographical area. Finally, much of the site's important content is trapped in PDF, making it difficult to index and display in the results.

As five whys (page 19), which is how you get from a symptom to a cause.

This is the simplest tool on the sheet and probably the one you will use most. You do not need a canvas or a form. You need a complaint and the patience to ask the same question five times. Here is the one we ran in class:

• Problem: Students eat badly.
• Why? They eat whatever is fastest between classes.
• Why? They have fifteen minutes, and the dining hall is a ten minute walk.
• Why? Their schedule was built around which rooms were free, not around their day.
• Why? Registration optimizes for filling classrooms.
• Why? Nobody owns the student's day. Every office owns one piece of it.

Six lines, and you have travelled from a habit to an org chart. Notice what happened to the solutions along the way. At line one you are designing a nutrition campaign. At line three you are designing something about distance and time. At line six you are not designing a product at all, you are describing a governance problem that no student project will fix.

Every rung on that ladder is a different problem you could frame, and each one lets you design something different. The bottom is not the "real" answer. You are choosing a rung on purpose instead of inheriting the one you walked in with.

Where should you stop? Stop where you can still reach the people. If you cannot get to anyone at that level to ask what they think, you have gone one rung too far for this course.

Brown's own chain, on the same page, does exactly this:

• Problem: The search engine needs to be fixed.
• Why? Members are complaining they can't find anything.
• Why? Basic searches yield meaningless or out-of-date results.
• Why? Content isn't updated regularly, and the search feature doesn't work consistently across different areas of the site.
• Why? Different parts of the organization manage their content in different ways, depending on how important it is to their business.
• Why? The organization is so big, different areas of the organization use different revenue models.

Notice where that ends. The search box was never the problem. The problem is that the business is structured in a way that produces a bad search box. That is the move you are learning.

As a hypothesis (page 20), when you can name the outcome you expect:

By showing suggested results as users type their search terms, site analytics will show 50% less "pogo-sticking" between search results and site content.

Check your draft against the six traps

Brown, chapter 2, figure 2.3, adapted from Stephen Anderson. Every bad example below frames the same healthcare topic. Read your own statement and ask which of these you just did.

Brown's two broader failure modes, same chapter: a statement can be too broad to mean anything, or too prescriptive, which is when it has quietly become a description of the solution.

Project objectives, which are not the problem

Brown separates these on purpose. The problem statement says what is wrong. The objective says what you will make. His model objective (page 23):

Create a clickable prototype for a responsive web application, using the existing intranet style guide, to help employees track their professional development.

Be specific about five things (page 25): scope (which aspects of the product you will focus on), outputs (what deliverables you need to create), fidelity (how closely the outputs will resemble a final product), time (how long you have for each aspect), and priority (what you work on first).

2. The audience

Due Wednesday, September 9. Read for it: Davis, chapter 1.

You owe three audiences, a paragraph each. Two sources give you structure.

Davis: the four dimensions

Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, chapter 1, under Segmentation. Divide a target into groups based on:

• Demographics
• The target's life stage
• Psychographics (the study of a target's interests, attitudes, and opinions)
• The behaviors and actions a target takes

In chapter 10 he adds the move that makes this writable. After you have shown the audience exists, "warm up the cold data by painting a picture of the people the data represent. Choose a character from a TV show, movie, or your family who would best represent the target and create a persona."

He does it himself twice. Phil Dunphy from Modern Family as the target for a car: "a middle-aged, married real estate agent with three kids. His quirky personality and house in the suburbs would make it easier when formulating a concept, visual execution, and media channel approach to selling him a car." And Wilma Flintstone as the target for a point-and-shoot camera: "this married woman likes jewelry, owns her own home, has a car, and goes out with her neighbors. You'd know that she has one child and as a result would have many family and social events to capture, document, and share."

If you cannot start writing, start there. Then replace the character with a real person once you have talked to one.

Hall: the persona fields

Erika Hall, Just Enough Research, chapter 8. Her definition: "A persona is a fictional user archetype, a composite model you create from the data you've gathered by talking to real people, that represents a group of needs and behaviors."

Her warning, which matters for this course: "Design targets are not marketing targets. Stamp that on every persona document you create. Market segments do not translate into archetypes." And: "A truly useful persona is the result of collaborative effort following firsthand user research. Otherwise you're just making up a character that might be as relevant to the design process as any given imaginary friend."

The fields, with her instructions condensed:

• Photo. A real photo of a real, relatable person, not stock. Nobody the team knows.
• Name. Fits the demographics, and everyone can pronounce it.
• Demographics. Realistic without stereotyping. Ideally derived from people you actually interviewed.
• Role. Match it to someone you interviewed.
• Quote. An actual quote from an interview that carries a core belief.
• Goals. Three or four, based on what you heard. The core of the persona.
• Behaviors and habits. The specific, habitual behaviors. "Real life is imperfect and complicated. Capture this."
• Skills. Real level of technical expertise, not the level you wish for.
• Environment. Hardware, software, access. What shapes the interaction.
• Relationships. Who else is involved.

Her worked persona

Just Enough Research, figure 8.2. This is what a finished one looks like.

Diane McAvoy Local parent

"I have so much going on between my job and taking care of the kid, I can't remember a damn thing without my iPhone."

Goals Find a few places for reliable family outings that don't require a lot of planning. Entertain her family members when they are out of town. Keep learning throughout her life.

Stats 33 years old. Married with a 5-year-old child. Lives in Chicago, IL. Account manager for a large health care company.

Behaviors and habits Works from home two days a week. Does most of her shopping online. Weekend routine is one day for "fun" and one day for errands and chores.

Technology and skills Diane is a multi-device user. Has a work-assigned Windows laptop that she carries between home and the office, as well as an older MacBook and an iPhone for personal use. The family shares an iPad 2. Because she is pressed for time, she has strong habits, no patience, and little motivation to explore.

Relationships Lives with husband and son. Has large extended family. Sisters often visit and bring their children.

Read the technology line again. "Strong habits, no patience, and little motivation to explore" is a design constraint. That is what separates a persona from a character sketch.

Your two authors disagree, and you should have a position

Brown does not use personas. He calls them "summaries of user requirements rendered as caricatures" and says designers "came to realize their shortcomings: dehumanizing users, glossing over important details, too much investment in backstory and not enough in design constraints." He prefers to capture four things about users instead: their expectations, their cognitive constraints, the scope of everything they do around the activity, and their domain perceptions, meaning what they believe about the industry.

Hall thinks a research-based persona is one of the most durable things research produces.

They are both assigned, so you do not get to duck it. Pick a side in your audience paragraphs and be ready to say why in critique.

3. Asking people things

Starts Wednesday, September 2. Read for it: Brown, chapter 1. Hall, chapter 5, comes September 14.

What goes in an interview guide

Hall, chapter 5. Four parts:

1. The brief description and goal of the study.
2. The basic factual or demographic questions for putting the participant's answers in context.
3. A couple of icebreaker or warm-up questions to get the participant talking.
4. The questions or topics that are the primary focus of the interview.

Her rule for the body of the interview: "Ask open-ended questions that encourage the subject to talk, not closed questions that can be answered with 'yes' or 'no.'" Her example of the difference, verbatim. Closed: "Do you communicate with the marketing department often?" Open: "Tell me about the internal groups you communicate with as part of your job."

And: "Use your list of questions more as a checklist than as a script. If you read the questions verbatim, you'll sound like a robocall survey."

Three questions worth memorizing

Hall, chapter 5. Each one forces a story instead of an opinion.

• Walk me through a typical day in your current job.
• Tell me about a misunderstanding you had with a coworker.
• Tell me about a situation at work where you had to deal with something unexpected.

Her sample question set

Written for a museum website project. Adapt the shape, not the content.

• Tell me about your job.
• Walk me through a typical week in your life.
• How often are you online?
• What computers or devices do you use?
• When do you use each of them?
• Do you share any of them?
• What do you typically do online?
• What do you typically do on your days off?
• How do you decide what to do?
• Tell me about how your children use the internet.
• How do you decide what to do on your days off with your kids?
• What are your particular non-work interests? What do you read online besides the news?
• How frequently do you visit museums in your town? Which ones?
• What prompts you to go?

If you are interviewing a client rather than a user

Hall, chapter 4. Her standard set, useful for the pitch and for any real job you take after this:

• How long have you been in this role?
• What are your essential duties and responsibilities?
• What does a typical day look like?
• Who are the people and teams you work most closely with? How well is that relationship working?
• Regarding the project we're working on, how would you define success? From your perspective, what will have changed for the better once it's complete?
• Do you have any concerns about this project?
• What do you think the greatest challenges to success are? Internal and external?
• What are your most common tasks with the system?
• What problems have you noticed?
• What kinds of work-arounds do you use?
• Is there anyone else I should talk to?

The work-arounds question is the one that pays. A habit built around an obstacle is a problem nobody has framed yet.

Competitive research, which is the "what they use today instead" line

Hall, chapter 6, condensed; read the chapter. The competition is whatever your audience does today instead of using your product, and that includes a spreadsheet, a colleague, and doing nothing. Audit two things about each one: what it says about itself (its positioning, its price, its promise) and what its users say about it (reviews, forum threads, the complaints that repeat). The gap between the two is a finding. You are not looking for something to copy. You are looking for the standard your audience already expects and for the thing nobody is doing.

The number with its context, which is the "what that costs them" line

Hall, chapter 9, condensed; read the chapter. A number tells you what and never why: a count, a price, a share, a rank. The reason lives in the reviews and threads, which is qualitative. A count without its denominator is a decoration, so every number you cite carries its source, its year, the population it counted, and what it does not cover. The AIGA census counts the people who answered the AIGA census. Say so.

4. The creative brief

Written in class Wednesday, September 30. Read for it: Davis, chapter 10, due September 9.

Davis, chapter 10, "Where's the Map? 11 Questions a Creative Brief Should Answer." The whole list:

1. How would you describe the product?
2. What is the assignment?
3. What is the background?
4. Whom are we selling to?
5. What is the one main benefit of this product?
6. What are the reasons to believe?
7. What barriers to purchase do we need to overcome?
8. What is the net takeaway?
9. What is the brand position?
10. What is the desired response?
11. What is the timing?

He credits the list to his former freelance partner, Neil Feinstein, and then refuses to canonize it: "there is no template... Strive for clarity rather than uniformity."

Two pages. This is the document your brand answers to for the rest of the term.

5. Where this is going

You do not need these yet. They are here so you can see the shape of the term, and so the vocabulary is not new when we get there.

The positioning statement

Davis prints it twice, and the two versions differ slightly. Chapter 1:

"For (target), (brand or product) is the (category) that delivers (benefit/point of difference) because only (brand name) is (reason to believe based on a tangible attribute or feature)."

Chapter 9, the fuller version, introduced as "a widely used and time-tested framework":

For (target), (brand) is the (category) that is the (point of difference) so they can (end benefit) because (reason to believe based on point of difference).

His definitions of the slots, condensed. Target: defined by demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics. Category: "BMW could be a car company... or the engineer of ultimate driving machines. The more creatively you can describe the frame of reference in ways that still apply, the better." Point of difference: "What can your brand or product say that no other brand can say?" End benefit: what the product does for the target. Reason to believe: "This cannot be an opinion statement; it must be rooted in the truth about this particular product or brand."

His worked example:

For (creative professionals with an eye for capturing and sharing beauty), (Nikon) is the (digital point and shoot) that delivers (a window to their world), so they can (experience deeper connections through a shared perspective) because (of Nikon's 100 year history of developing new technologies that allow you to capture and share your experiences in their purest form, it's as if you were there).

Note that the problem statement and the positioning statement are the same sentence pointed in opposite directions. One says who is stuck and why. The other says who you serve and why you win. You write the first in two weeks and the second before the pitch.

The brand ladder

You cannot write a positioning statement cold. Davis: "you cannot create a sound positioning statement without building it from the ground up in a brand ladder." Built in this order:

First, you start with the features (or attributes of a brand) that express the tangible aspects of what a brand is. Next, you layer on top of the features the corresponding benefits to the target consumer. On top of those benefits, you identify and list the values the target uses to make decisions about whatever it is that your brand is selling. Lastly, you use each of these three pieces to create a "positioning statement."

Features, then benefits, then values, then the statement. Climbing it is called laddering up.

The Creative Strategy Framework

Davis's own tool, chapters 6 and 7, and the thing the book builds toward. Four columns:

Target | Facts | Feature/Benefit | Message or Objective

• Target. Defined in fragments stating demographics, psychographics, and behaviors. "Look here for logical ways to create segmentation."
• Facts. About the brand, product, or service. "Look beyond the brand's website... Blogs and reviews will show any gaps between what the company says and what the customer is experiencing."
• Feature/Benefit. "A Feature is a physical quality or tangible attribute that defines the product. Tangible features often have intangible benefits and thus these are written as a ratio. This Feature enables this corresponding Benefit."
• Message or Objective. A message is what the target should take away. An objective "usually begins with a verb: Convert, Drive, Engage, Build, Grow, Increase, Decrease, etc. by % among X target."

You fill it in three passes. Quantity: dump everything into its column, about 45 to 60 minutes per column. Quality: go back and cut what is irrelevant, and make what is left more specific. Pull strategic threads: having filled it in vertically, read it horizontally.

The thread is the payoff, and it is one sentence:

Based on their need or behavior, this Target > Would be interested in a conversation centered around this Fact > Using this Feature/Benefit in the headline and copy to get their attention > To deliver this Message or accomplish this Objective.

Where everything came from

• Dan Brown, Practical Design Discovery, chapters 1 and 2. Problem statement form, the four framings, the traps table, project objectives, the anti-persona position. The traps table is adapted from Stephen Anderson, "Stop Doing What You're Told," IA Summit 2013.
• Erika Hall, Just Enough Research, chapters 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9. Interview guide, question sets, persona fields, Diane McAvoy; the competitive audit and the number with its context are condensed, not quoted.
• Douglas Davis, Creative Strategy and the Business of Design, chapters 1, 6, 7, 9, and 10. Segmentation, the persona trick, the eleven questions, the positioning statement, the brand ladder, the Creative Strategy Framework.
• The Atlassian Team Playbook, "Problem Framing." The four-box canvas, the timings, and the instruction to understand rather than solve. Free at atlassian.com/team-playbook.

Quotations are verbatim. Everything else is a condensation, and where it is condensed you should go read the chapter.

One more, free and worth an hour: IDEO.org's Field Guide to Human-Centered Design. Its "Frame Your Design Challenge" worksheet shows a vague question, "How might we improve the lives of children?", being revised into a sharp one, "How might parents in low-income communities ensure children thrive in their first five years?" It also gives the best scoping test on this sheet. If you can think of five possible solutions in a few minutes, your frame is sized about right.