Hot take: most startup design briefs are the wrong brief

Founders come in with a lkist of screens they need designed. Homepage, onboarding, dashboard, settings.

That's not a design brief. That's a delivery list.

The actual brief (the one worth spending time on) is: what problem are we solving, for whom, and what does success look like in their life? Everything else is a consequence of answering that well.

The agencies and designers that add the most value aren't the ones who execute the list fastest. They're the ones who push back on the list, reframe the problem, and sometimes tell you that screen 3 shouldn't exist at all.

Most founders don't want to hear that at the start. Most of them wish they'd heard it six months later when they're rebuilding.

Do you agree or have you had good experiences with a more execution-focused approach?