We spent the first week talking about design, and not really making anything. So, I know what you're thinking, "enough talking let's start making." But before you can make anything, you need to know what is it that you're making. Most design projects have a brief, and a brief outlines or describes the project before you even begin designing. The brief itself is kind of a design project in its own way. So, it's interesting to look at this idea of, "what's in a brief?" A brief often describes what the project is, what its goals are, and how it's going to work. So, this involves looking at content, context, and audience. I know that I promised that we were going to stop talking and start making, but we need to define what it is that we're going to make first of all. What is it? Who is it for? Where does it live? Without this clear articulation of these goals, you could be making something for weeks or months without it really achieving what you wanted to achieve. So, let's look at how these three questions might work in a brief and let's look at some examples. For instance, if we thought about what is it, let's come up with an idea. Perhaps I want to make a guitar tuner, that's something that could be quite interesting to exist on a digital platform. I can also think about who is it for, let's say that it's for beginning guitarists. It's not for master guitarist that might already know how to tune their guitar. It's really for novices - people that are just starting out and might need some help. I could also think about, where does it live? It would be logical for this to live on a phone app, so that it could be portable, it could be easy to carry around and something that I could use hands-free when I'm tuning my guitar. So, when you put these things together, you've got an accurate description, it's a phone app to tune your guitar for beginning guitarists. This is entirely non-visual but I've already started to give some shape to my idea. I've already started to describe it with words and this is pre-design. It's really design that outlines or defines what the project is before you've even made anything. So, let's try it again. But let's think of a different subject this time. How about a digital microscope? That sounds like something that could be quite interesting to make as an app and that could utilize a lot of what a phone can do. So, who is it for? In this case, it's going to be for amateur scientists. So again, it's not for the novice but it's also not for the expert. A proven scientist might need something much more technical. Where would it live? It would seem again that this would work as a phone app best of all so it can utilize what a phone is good at. It could use the camera in the phone and it could use the screen of the phone to look at what you're magnifying. If we put these things together, we'd have an accurate description of what the project is, who it's for and where it's going to live? A digital microscope for amateur scientists on your phone. Again, it's purely non-visual. It really just describes the project using words. We've articulated what it is so when we start to make something, we've got a clear set of goals. This is really important to know that our goals, constraints, platform, audience, all of these things are going to shape and inform the design and quite often the designer doesn't get to decide these things. These things are determined by the client. Often, they're determined by the client in the brief, before the designer even gets a chance to think about them or work with them. So, if you want to be a good designer you're going to need what the goals are? What the constraints are? What kind of platform your project is going to live on? Who the audience is? Because these things will inform your design. What this means is, you really need to know your project, you need to understand every aspect of it so you can make the best possible visual solution for it. More than anything, you need to be the expert no matter what kind of content you're going to be working with. You should be the expert as a designer, but also be the expert in terms of the content that you're working with.