design-exploration

To explore design variations effectively, you need a structured design brief that captures component analysis, constraints, and variation axes before generating options. This approach ensures problem comprehension and aligns outputs with user goals, preventing shallow or repetitive results.

A UX design brief should include component function, content model, interactions, hard constraints, soft constraints, and degrees of freedom. These elements ground meaningful variation axes and generate distinct design hypotheses for evaluation.

You need a structured design brief when asking for variations, alternatives, or directions for a component. It triggers a brief-first exploration workflow that coordinates divergent design exploration and delegates design hypotheses to the subagent.

Generate distinct design hypotheses by identifying hard constraints, soft constraints, and degrees of freedom from component analysis. Use these to define concrete variation axes and specifications, then delegate them to the design subagent for evaluation.

The best way to coordinate divergent design exploration is producing a structured design brief that captures component analysis and variation specifications before delegating to the design subagent, ensuring meaningful and distinct design directions.

Defining variation axes without analyzing constraints risks meaningless or repetitive design options. Component analysis identifies hard constraints, soft constraints, and degrees of freedom that ground the exploration in viable design directions.