01
Gather the project signals
You collect your client's goals, daily-use needs, constraints, priorities, tradeoffs, and approval process without trying to solve the design yet.
Made for Architects
Clarify Your Client’s Real Definition of Success
Also useful for: people in Creative
25 min
Intermediate
Creative
Architect
Communicate Better
Career outcome:
Avoid Professional Risk
Use a guided client brief to uncover what success means in daily use, design priorities, tradeoffs, and final approval.
We'll use them to write your prompt.
Completed ✓
Make Your Play
Give us the situation. We’ll build the prompt.
You can prevent a project from drifting toward an attractive design that doesn't solve your client's real needs.
Your answers save as you type.
What you'll do
This is the plan inside your prompt. Add your details first. Then follow these steps with ChatGPT or Claude.
02
Run the success interview
You paste the compiled prompt into your AI assistant, answer the focused follow-up questions, and keep your answers tied to outcomes rather than design features.
03
Confirm the design target
You check the draft against your notes, remove unsupported assumptions, and ask your client to confirm or correct the wording.
Make Your Play
Clarify Your Client’s Real Definition of Success
Tell us what the prompt needs to know
Start with the questions below. Each answer personalizes the playbook and builds the prompt you’ll use at the end.
Your situation
Describe your project type, current phase, scope, and the reason your client started the project.
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List the goals and descriptive words your client has already used, even if some are vague.
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Describe who will use your project, what happens during a normal day, and where current use breaks down.
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List your known budget, schedule, site, code, operational, maintenance, or existing-building limits.
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List what your client appears to value most and note any priorities that compete.
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Note what your client may be willing to reduce, delay, simplify, or spend more on to protect a higher priority.
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Identify who confirms success, what concerns each decision-maker has, and how your final direction will be approved.
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This playbook was updated. Review your inputs before copying.
What you'll do
Check a step when you finish it.
01
Gather the project signals
You collect your client's goals, daily-use needs, constraints, priorities, tradeoffs, and approval process without trying to solve the design yet.
02
Run the success interview
You paste the compiled prompt into your AI assistant, answer the focused follow-up questions, and keep your answers tied to outcomes rather than design features.
03
Confirm the design target
You check the draft against your notes, remove unsupported assumptions, and ask your client to confirm or correct the wording.
Fill in the fields above to generate your prompt preview.
Assembled prompt
Beginner instructions
You can start with rough notes. If you don’t know an answer, write “unknown” so the guided questions can focus on the gap. Keep design solutions out of your first response and describe the result your client wants instead.
Advanced instructions
You can include conflicting stakeholder requests, operational measures, post-occupancy goals, and known approval gates. Push the final approval checks toward observable evidence rather than subjective words alone.
Use this when
Use this before concept design, after a vague kickoff, or whenever your client uses broad goals such as "welcoming," "flexible," or "high-end" without defining what those words mean.
You'll need
- Project context
- Stated goals
- Daily use
- Known constraints
- Current priorities
- Known tradeoffs
- Approval context
You'll get
- One clear success statement, three ranked priorities, explicit tradeoffs, observable approval checks, and a confirmation response from your client or a precise list of requested revisions.
By the end of this playbook
You will have:
- One clear success statement, three ranked priorities, explicit tradeoffs, observable approval checks, and a confirmation response from your client or a precise list of requested revisions.
Examples
Progress 1 of 3