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🎨Freelance / CreativeStandard

Project Brief Discovery

Extract the real requirements from a client before scope creep starts.

Sender: Freelance Product Designer at Independent consultant
Participant: Startup Founder — Prospective client
This is an illustrative example showing how Willit could be used in freelance / creative. All names, quotes, and data are fictional. We never use real customer interviews for marketing purposes.
1

The Brief

The sender described what they wanted to learn. Willit's AI refined these instructions into a natural interview flow.

I have a discovery call coming up with a startup founder who found me through a referral. They've sent a brief that describes what they want, but in my experience the document brief and the actual brief are two different things. I need to get to the real one before I write a proposal. They say they want a "redesign of the onboarding flow" but I don't yet know what problem they're actually trying to solve, what constraints I'll be working within, or whether they've worked with freelancers before. **What's broken:** Not what they want built, but what's wrong right now. High drop-off? User confusion? Customer feedback? I want the symptom before the solution. If they jump straight to solutions, pull them back. **Who the users are:** Demographics, technical literacy, context of use — but also: do they actually know their users or are they guessing? I need to know whether there's real user research I can reference or whether I'm starting from scratch. **Success metrics:** How will we know this worked? Three months after launch, what number would have moved? If they can't name a metric, the project doesn't have a definition of done. **Budget range:** I don't need an exact number but I need a ballpark. Is this a $3K engagement or a $30K engagement? It changes what's possible and whether we're even the right fit. **Timeline:** Is there a hard deadline? A launch event, a fundraise, a product milestone? Or is it loose? Hard deadlines change how I'd staff and sequence the work. **Constraints:** What am I not allowed to change? Design system, tech stack, brand guidelines, features that can't be touched? Understanding what's fixed helps me understand what's actually in scope. **Decision-making:** Who approves the work? Is it just them or are there other stakeholders, board members, co-founders who have a say? I've had projects derail because I didn't know about a co-founder veto until week four. **Previous freelancer experience:** Have they worked with a freelancer or agency before? How did it go? Good or bad, it sets the expectations I'll need to manage.
2

The Interview

Willit's AI detective conducted a standard interview with a Startup Founder. The conversation explored 7 topic areas through natural follow-up questions, adapting in real-time based on the participant's responses.

Understand what is actually brokenUnderstand the usersDefine success metricsEstablish budget rangeIdentify timeline and hard deadlinesMap decision-making and stakeholdersUnderstand previous freelancer experience
3

The Report

Willit automatically extracted structured insights from the conversation — scores, goal coverage, key quotes, and red flags.

Interview Scorecard

EngagementSentimentDepthQualityCoverageCoherence

Metric Averages

Engagement
87
Sentiment
76
Depth / Accuracy
80
Info Quality
82
Goal Coverage
75
Coherence
90

Summary

The founder wants to fix a 68% drop-off in onboarding between account creation and first feature use. The root problem is unclear — they have no user research, only analytics. Budget is $8-12K, timeline is 8 weeks (board demo is the hard deadline), and there's a co-founder with design opinions who wasn't mentioned until probed. Previous agency experience ended badly due to deliverable quality.

Goal Coverage

Covered

Understand what is actually broken

  • 68% of users who create an account never reach the first 'aha moment' — they drop off in the setup flow before seeing the core value
  • Current onboarding was built by developers — no designer was involved. Founder describes it as 'functional but joyless and confusing'
Partial

Understand the users

  • Target user is a solo operations manager or small team lead at a 10-50 person company — typically not technical

Gap: No user research to reference — founder is working from assumptions, not validated personas. Research component may need to be scoped into the project.

Partial

Define success metrics

  • Wants to move the onboarding completion rate from 32% to 60%+ within 60 days of launch

Gap: Did not define what 'completion' means technically — needs a precise event definition before this metric can be tracked

Covered

Establish budget range

  • Budget range is $8,000-$12,000 all-in — founder was upfront about this when asked directly
Covered

Identify timeline and hard deadlines

  • Hard deadline is 8 weeks — board demo includes a live product walkthrough and the redesigned onboarding will be shown
Partial

Map decision-making and stakeholders

  • Co-founder has strong design opinions and will need to approve any major UX direction — was not mentioned until directly asked

Gap: Did not clarify how disagreements between founder and co-founder are resolved — this needs to be addressed before project start

Covered

Understand previous freelancer experience

  • Previous agency engagement ended poorly — deliverables were late and 'looked like a template, not our product'

Key Quotes

“Two thirds of our users hit the setup screen and leave. We built the product people want, I think. They just never get to see it.”
“My co-founder has opinions. He's not a designer but he knows what he doesn't like. You'll meet him.”
“The last agency made something that could have been for anyone. I need something that's clearly ours.”

Red Flags

  • Co-founder with design veto was undisclosed — this needs to be structured into the approval process before the project starts or it will derail at delivery
  • No user research exists — founder is working from sales call impressions, not validated user understanding. Proposal needs to account for a lightweight discovery phase.
  • 8-week hard deadline with no flex is tight for a full redesign — needs honest scope conversation about what's achievable vs what gets phased

Follow-up Suggestions

  • Include a co-founder intro call as a pre-project step in the proposal — get design alignment before work begins
  • Scope a 2-session user interview round into the project as a discovery component — non-negotiable given the absence of existing research
  • Define the onboarding 'completion' event precisely with the engineering team before writing the success metric into the contract

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