DesignTech
EXP#
13
ReqStudio
A local-first project brief tool with ten guided sections, unlimited pages and projects, and a live, weighted readiness score that names exactly what's still missing before a brief goes out.
01
Problems Solved
02
Context
Most project briefs live in a Word document that someone started once, half-filled in, and never went back to finish — which means the people building from it are often working from a brief with silent, undocumented gaps. ReqStudio set out to replace that with a guided, ten-section structure that always knows what's missing, without asking for an account or a server.
03
The Challenge
The product needed to make an unstructured brief-writing process feel guided without being rigid — supporting unlimited pages and sections filled in any order, while still producing a single, meaningful completeness signal a stakeholder could trust.
04
Research
Reviewed how briefs actually get written in practice — rarely start-to-finish, usually revisited out of order across weeks — and used that to justify a section-by-section completion model instead of a linear wizard.
05
Insights
The key findings that shaped the direction.
01
Briefs get built out of order, not top to bottom
Forcing a linear wizard would have fought how people actually write — stakeholders answer what they know first and leave gaps to fill later, so every section needed to be independently completable.
02
A single readiness number needs to say what's missing, not just what's done
A percentage alone invites arguments about the number; naming the specific missing sections next to the score is what actually gets a brief finished before it's sent.
03
Per-page detail is where requirements actually break down
The riskiest gaps weren't in the big-picture goals section — they were in unspecified individual pages, so page-level completeness needed its own bar, not just a rollup into one section.
06
How decisions were made
01
Structure the brief as ten independent sections, not a wizard
Split the brief into overview, goals, audience, structure, pages, functional requirements, content, technical requirements, risks and approvals — each individually trackable, so a half-finished brief is still a usable brief.
02
Make the readiness score name its gaps
Paired the weighted overall percentage with an explicit list of which sections are dragging it down, so 'send this brief' becomes a decision backed by specifics instead of a guess.
03
Give every page its own completeness bar
Broke Page Requirements into per-page cards — purpose, CTA, content needs, components, dependencies, SEO, accessibility, analytics — each scored independently so gaps don't hide inside an aggregate.
04
Remove the save button entirely
Wrote every keystroke to local storage moments after typing stops, and flushed on tab close, so the product never asks a user to remember to save a brief they were interrupted while writing.
07
Solution
A local-first project brief tool with ten guided sections, unlimited pages and projects, and a live, weighted readiness score that names exactly what's still missing before a brief goes out.
Live, weighted readiness score naming the specific sections still missing
Ten guided brief sections completable in any order, each with its own completion bar
A shareable report view with sticky table of contents, collapsible sections and a print stylesheet
Unlimited pages per project, each scored on purpose, CTAs, content, components, SEO, accessibility and analytics
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