Writing a good brief
What to put in a brief, what to leave out, and how it becomes a plan.
Updated September 2026 · 4 min read
The brief is the only thing you have to write. Insightful reads it and drafts the interview plan: the topics it must cover, the ones it explores if they come up, any stimuli to show and any structured questions to ask. A clear brief makes better interviews.
Write it the way you would brief a human researcher. A few sentences is usually enough; a paragraph is plenty.
Say what you want to learn
Start with the decision you are trying to make, not the questions you want asked. Insightful is good at turning a goal into questions; it is much worse at guessing a goal from a list of questions.
Understand why customers who cancelled their subscription decided to leave, and what might convince them to return.
Ask them why they cancelled, whether price was a factor, what they use now and if they would come back.
The second brief produces a plan that reads like a script. The first lets the interviewer decide what to ask next based on what the person just said.
Say who you are talking to
Use Who is being interviewed for anything that changes how the interviewer should talk: who they are, what they already know, what they have done. It shapes the tone and the opening.
Self-serve plans, cancelled in the last 90 days. Mostly small agencies of two to five people.
Tell the interviewer what it should know
Anything the interviewer should know? is for context it needs but should not necessarily say out loud: recent changes, things to avoid, terms your customers use.
We raised prices in June and removed the starter plan. Don’t ask about the mobile app; it is being rebuilt.
Your workspace context (company, website, what the product does) is added to every interview automatically. Repeat it here only if this study is about something unusual.
Pick a length and a mode
Target length sets how many topics the plan aims for. Short is three or four topics and about four minutes, Standard is five or six and about seven minutes, Deep is eight or more and about twelve minutes or longer. Participants see the estimate on the welcome page, so pick honestly.
Interview mode is Text or Voice. In a voice study participants talk out loud and can switch to typing at any time. Voice studies also let you choose the interviewer’s voice.
What happens next
Press Build the interview plan. It usually takes a few seconds to half a minute. You land on the Plan step, where every topic is editable: rename it, reorder it, pin it as must-cover, or add stimuli and structured questions. Nothing is fixed until you launch.