Flip the Brief tool
Flip the Brief helps agency teams challenge a client brief instead of accepting its assumptions at face value. It surfaces gaps and hidden assumptions, helping teams clarify client expectations and align before the work begins.
💼 Business goal
Improve the profitability and consistency of the agency’s creative process by helping teams challenge briefs earlier, align with clients faster, and reduce wasted project time
👩🏭Role
I designed and prototyped all core product features in close collaboration with one development team. I planned and facilitated user interviews and usability testing sessions, organised workshops for the team, and designed the product’s animations and motion interactions.
🚀Impact
923 brief-flipping reports generated
⌚Timeline
5 months · 2022
🩶 Credits
Zuzanna Pawlak, Patryk Wlaź
Discover & Define
To collect information about users and their needs I’ve conducted user interviews
👑 User Interviews
Goals:
Understand what information teams need to complete a brief
Learn how users currently challenge briefs and which methods they use
Identify user groups, pain points, and unmet needs
In numbers:
10 online sessions
45 minutes per session
Participants: 5 lead strategists and 5 media planners
🧠 Key findings and design responses
The research revealed three major opportunities.
Strategists wanted media planners to challenge briefs earlier
Evidence: 4 out of 5 of interviewed strategists expressed a need for media planners to question the brief at an earlier stage.
Design response: Create a tool that encourages media planners to engage with and challenge the brief.
Planners were hesitant to question a client’s brief
Evidence: 80% of respondents captured screenshots from multiple platforms and combined them into a final PowerPoint presentation for clients.
Design response: Create one editable space where users could collect selected audience data and prepare a client-ready presentation.
Planners lacked a clear method for questioning a brief
Evidence: 2 out of 5 planners could not name a method for challenging a brief when asked.
Design response: Introduce gamified exercises that guide users through different brief-questioning methods.
✏️ Design goal
Create a playful, collaborative, and low-pressure experience that motivates creative teams and stakeholders to challenge assumptions, generate meaningful provocations, and produce a clearer, stronger brief.
Develop & Deliver
🕹️ Building the prototype
I translated the research findings into an end-to-end prototype that supported the following workflow:
Upload a brief or enter the information manually
Flip the brief using four guided games
Download a presentation-ready summary
The aim was to make client conversations less uncomfortable by giving media planners a structured, data-informed output to support discussions with clients.
👑 Usability testing
I ran usability sessions with Media Planners from across the company.
Goals:
Validate the concept and information architecture
Check whether the games were intuitive
Evaluate the clarity and usefulness of the summary output
In numbers
• 10 online sessions
• 30 minutes per session
🧠 Key findings and design responses
Users did not recognize the game cards as clickable
Evidence: 50% of participants initially struggled to enter a game, even though the cards changed their shadow on hover.
Design response: Introduce more distinctive animated hover states and clearer visual cues to make the cards feel interactive.
The Questions game did not provide enough guidance
Evidence: 30% of participants were unsure how to begin the Questions game.
Design response: Add starter questions and clearer guidance to help users get started.
Users wanted an editable PowerPoint output
Evidence: 50% of participants expressed a need for an output that could be downloaded and edited in PowerPoint.
Design response: Discuss the functionality with the development team and add editable PowerPoint export to the product roadmap.
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