design-handoff-brief

# Design Handoff Brief Skill Produce a design brief that sets designers up for success — grounding them in user context and constraints before they open Figma, not after they've gone in the wrong direction. ## Required Inputs Ask the user for these if not provided: - **Feature brief or PRD** (even rough notes work) - **Designer's name or team** (for personalisation) - **Technical constraints** (any engineering limitations already known) - **Timeline** (when does design need to be done?) ## What Designers Actually Need (and PMs Often Skip) - The user's goal, not the feature name - The emotional state of the user at this moment in the journey - What success looks like — how will we know the design worked? - Constraints: technical, legal, brand, accessibility - Edge cases that must be handled - What we're explicitly NOT solving for ## Process 1. Read the feature brief or PRD provided 2. Extract user goal (reframe from feature language to user outcome language) 3. Identify constraints — technical limitations, brand guidelines, accessibility requirements 4. List edge cases the design must handle 5. Define success criteria the design should be evaluated against 6. Write a "not in scope" section to prevent scope creep in design 7. **Validate** — Confirm every edge case listed is specific enough to design for, and every out-of-scope item is concrete enough to say "no" to ## Output Structure ### Design Brief: [Feature Name] **User Goal:** (in the user's words, not ours) "When ...