design-exploration

To generate structured design variations, analyze a component's function, content model, interaction model, and context to create a design brief. This ensures each variation is a distinct hypothesis rather than a simple reskin. A frontmatter-driven metadata payload accompanies the brief for delegation to the design subagent.

A structured design brief comprehends a component's function, content model, interaction model, and context before generating variations. You need a design brief when requesting options or variations for a component, ensuring problem comprehension and preventing shallow or misaligned outputs.

To scope design exploration, identify hard constraints, soft constraints, and degrees of freedom for the component. Select meaningful variation axes including structural, content/semantic, conceptual, behavioral, and aesthetic dimensions to compose a design brief for delegation to the design subagent.

A design subagent is used for delegation after the design brief is composed. The skill delegates the frontmatter-driven metadata payload and brief to the design subagent, ensuring each variation is a distinct hypothesis with clear justification and trade-offs to guide evaluation.

The best way to evaluate design options is through a structured design brief that provides clear justification and trade-offs for each variation. This approach treats each variation as a distinct hypothesis rather than a simple reskin, guiding evaluation and preventing shallow or misaligned outputs.

Component variation generation produces shallow or misaligned outputs when problem comprehension is skipped. Without a structured design brief analyzing the component's function, content model, interaction model, and context, variations become simple reskins rather than distinct hypotheses with meaningful variation axes.