Seven Tips for a Return Brief

The return brief is a mechanism by which you are communicating back to a client what you understand the job to be, and how you will go about doing it. This is also an opportunity to introduce more sustainable options to your client. The return brief moves you out of the domain of merely servicing the client, to analysing the design brief as a document that demonstrates a set of assumptions about practical considerations as well as needs, values and desires. You need to be very prepared to back up non-conforming options with information that you can bring into conversations with your client. This means you have to do your research. Like the Guide, these tips address the early stages of the brief negotiation process.

1. Understand the Brief

First, you need to fully understand the brief. This is both in terms of what it is explicitly asking of you as well as its implicit assumptions and the 'culture' the brief comes from, even if you have only been asked for a request for proposal at this stage. Your aim here is to assess your leverage for introducing change options in the negotiation process. Meet face to face with your client. Sometimes, you will discover you have very little room-to-move, though often a client will respond to volunteered knowledge and look to you as a sustainability information source. In these cases, what may start out as a very limited opportunity could turn into a more long-term opportunity. Sometimes, a project will turn out to be more speculative and open than it seemed, and your additional input will be welcomed. It is also important to know who and what drives change in the client's organisation, what their priorities and goals are and what external factors 'fix' the brief in their eyes.
Remember too, once you start talking about sustainability, you will be labelled by the client. Of course, what this means varies from client to client; sometimes it can be a benefit and sometimes a hindrance. But you don't always have to present new options as 'sustainable'. They are also 'innovations'; new ways of doing or seeing things that demonstrate your knowledge, practicality, creativity, application and enthusiasm. Your non-conforming options should benefit the client in direct ways. Never assume 'green' choices are 'moral' obligations—they need to be presented as quality design.

2. Analyse Needs

This is an internal process too. What needs does this brief seek to meet? You need to at least meet these needs in more sustainable ways (sourcing local, more sustainable materials for example). The aim however, should be to open a conversation with the client whereby you redefine these needs, maximising your advisory role, and orienting the product away from unsustainability. Review Stage 3 of the Guide.

3. Define Problems

Clients do not like problems, but most would appreciate being shown problems that they have not accounted for, and this is also a legitimate part of your role. Show up problems with the brief through the identification of comparative 'benchmarks'. What problems have emerged with similar products; for example lack of design for disassembly, reuse or multiple use may have curtailed the use-life of a product, and escalated life cycle costs. Bring examples to meetings, so the client can see what you are talking about. The more challenging problems involve user-side assumptions which may impact on the formal and conceptual design. In a brief that assumes 'consumers are increasingly demanding smaller pack sizes' it will be important to know what user-side research was drawn upon to reach this conclusion, so that it can be effectively countered by your examples and proposals.

4. Design Responses

Meet 'problems' with clear-cut design 'solutions' that you have developed. These need to be backed up by research. Make sure you are clear on the feasibility of an option, the availability of a replacement material for example, otherwise your credibility will be compromised. These responses need not be radical. If the product is a short-life single use promotional item, for example, you might be able to expand its role and value immeasurably by making it adaptable and specific promotional material removable.

5. Provide Options as Added Value

Give the client more than they bargained for. Present more than one option for each requirement so that these emerge as added value. You could tier options, so the first proposal is a fairly conservative, though sustainability-oriented delivery of the client's 'vision', then build upon this to a more radical option. That way, the client can see you've considered a range of ideas (and also makes the moderate choice look like a bit of an unadventurous compromise!). Of course, the appropriateness of this depends upon your understanding of the brief and the culture of the client. You may have to be quite selective about your ideas and careful about how you introduce them, but remember, once the client has expressed preference for an option, you can be locked in to it, so keep the process as flexible as possible at this early stage . It is also important to visualise these options—not just in sketches or CAD layouts, but in examples that can be held, eaten, ridden, physically walked through etc., particularly if you are putting forward 'non-conforming' proposals.

6. Appropriate Costing

Half your task will be costing your options appropriately, which is where life cycle costing can make a difference. Life cycle costing is a way of quantifying all the costs associated with the product system from raw or reclaimed materials through to post-use. This is a big lever for architects, where energy inefficient design choices will end up having a direct cost impact on the building owner. The problem is, how do you sell long-life and high quality beyond issues of energy efficiency, when mostly production and supply supports the opposite? If the brief is for EEP's with a view to European markets, new legislation on waste enforces extended producer responsibilities. However, most products still escape this imperative and environmental 'costs' are absorbed. Working off the client's budget for the project, you need to strategically redraw the boundaries of what is to be costed to show what design and production costs will be avoided by sustaining the life of the product. It will also help if you keep your own costs moderate. Often, in the early stages of setting yourself up as a designer for sustainability, you may have to substantially absorb research costs. However, remember this is a learning process, and the research you do, your 'intellectual property', will continue to be of benefit to you in future jobs.

7. Be clear, concise but comprehensive, on time and do what you say you will do!

This you already know, but it's always worth remembering! Don't pack your return brief with information. Provide a clear, succinct document of no more than four or so pages following the original brief structure, stating your understanding of the brief and its objectives, general design specifications, your role, scope of work you will undertake as well as your terms of business. Your added options should not be built into this but presented in the form of face-to-face presentations (don't forget to let the client know you have some additional ideas to present at meetings, so they are prepared and not caught off-guard).

EDF is currently surveying design practices for more tips on the return brief process. See the Rebriefing Project.