Design brief?

Today's blog post is going to be a little bit less about cool stuff with pictures and a little bit more about "Rebecca never had a design course in her life, let's try and figure this out via the internet what could go wrong!"

My official plan for the next two weeks--which I'm just going to follow, come hell or high water, and if anyone has any issues with it or want me to go in a different direction, they should tell me...but the official plan looks straightforward enough that nobody will find it problematic--includes the following elements:

1. Review what the museum actually has in the way of collections. Find some system of documenting them. This is relatively easy and sounds like a good task when I need a break from some of the harder ones. 
2. Draft a conceptual design brief. Identify major goals, objectives, anticipated visitor experiences, intended results. This sounds harder, because "conceptual design brief" sounds like "plan your design in words through some arbitrary but relatively common format thou hast not dealt with before now". Today will involve, among other things, researching that format and what is typically expected of a conceptual design brief. Presumably it does not involve underpants. 
3. Develop a storyboard identifying gallery sectors and layouts by theme. Which definitely sounds like it should partner with but be completed after (2). 
4. Identify major budget projection expense line items. Say what now? I'll...worry about this later...but this also definitely sounds like that should come after 2 & 3, so waiting to figure out what this one wants me to do shouldn't be an issue. Hopefully somebody will clarify this, but they do need this information so.
5. Identify issues w/ facilities, staff, storage, programs, etc. Frankly, this is one of those things to keep in mind during all of the above. And to keep a running list somewhere. I have a composition notebook for notes, memos, scratch paper, etc for a reason. 
6. Carry out The Plan to begin pestering existing facilities until they tell us all their secrets. On it. Scheduled for Thursday afternoon. Bingo. 

So. Let's start with a fairly basic question: 

What IS a conceptual design brief? 

I dunno.

Google suggests--as well as my notes from a few weeks ago--that it is a brief document containing the idea, the 5-second-pitch, who you're aiming your idea at, the bare bones means of achieving the above, and what I don't know or suspect could go horribly, horribly wrong.

In other words, 

1. The goals and objectives, the ideas and the pitch, the endgame and its rationale. 
2. The anticipated visitor experience I've been trying to figure out. Now is a good time to put it into some kind of polished and formal form. Is that even possible? 
3. Intended outcomes and how we're getting there. The internet suggests a couple of formats, ranging from the dry and technical to the conceptual. I need to figure out what could most easily suit my subject matter: Moving stuff and putting up good signs. In a beautiful, ideal world, perhaps slightly more. 
4. Possible challenges or unknowns: Things I'm not clear on how they would work, but areas of weakness to proceed through with extreme caution. Sadly, I cannot classify the entire document as this...much as it would seem appropriate.

A design brief should not focus on the intended aesthetics of the design. It's something that could theoretically be handed to somebody else to worry about what the design actually looks like. Ironically, that "somebody else" is also me in this case. 

So much of this job seems to include phrases "delegate" or "have somebody in your team"...which makes me glare at the web page, book, video, or audio recording in mild disgust. Because there is no team. There's me, and there are some higher-ups, who mostly care that this gets done somehow by somebody and they don't need to know how or, for that matter, precisely what. There is such a thing as too open ended...this project is pushing that limit. Again, I'm considering this a good job experience... preferably, the next museum job experience will have me as some underling in a team, tho, that's all I'm saying...I digress.

Going through this checklist suggests that I do need to hunt somebody down to answer some key questions, though. Most of the checklist falls under, "Your problem, intern, but it's always good to recognise this," but some definitely falls under "Seek higher up and get this information out of them--or at least run your assumptions past them!" Questions like, What are the specifications? What are some designs to set as a standard? What's the budget? When's the deadline? 

This last one has a hope of being answered: The deadline is 3.5 weeks from now. At least for me. But figuring out when the deadline for the renovations are is also kind of important. I'm assuming this fall/winter, but I'm not certain.

More reading actually made me snort loudly enough to merit some strange looks. This quote is from an FAQ:

Who is responsible for developing, or writing, the design brief?
Design briefs must consist of collaboration between two equal partners. One partner represents the entity with the need for design work. The other partner represents the design function that will actually do the design work. Both partners are equally accountable for the final results of the design project. It is never appropriate for one group to prepare a design brief and simply hand it over to the design function for execution.

...I'm both people, I think... le sigh? Le sigh. So why am I doing this? I basically am the designer a design brief would be intended for, right? In case I screw up, don't finish, get eaten by a bear, struck by lightning, or go stark raving mad and am confined to the loony bin, I suppose. In an ideal universe, I would be working under the supervision of the writer or recipient of a document like this...or at least communicating with one of the aforementioned. Grumble.

Or maybe so that I just clearly define some kind of scope of my project for myself, to avoid said loony bin/suicide by bear/the urge to stand on a ridge when the lightning detector reads red. (We have got a lightning detector. It turns red when there is imminent danger so that everybody knows to stow the big telescopes and get their butts off the ridges. It does not say, DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER. It should.)




And because this post is woefully short on pictures, I have located a useful tool for exhibit design: THE WHEEL OF DEPENDENT IMPLEMENTATION

Cut out arrow, mount in centre, give it a spin, then BUILD THAT THING!