In this guide:
The design brief defines the foundations of your training before a single piece of content gets written — scope, audience, goals, and how you'll measure impact. It's built directly from what you shared during brief creation and gives you a single, shared reference point for the entire design process.
The brief is typically the moment to bring business stakeholders and subject matter experts into the process, so that what gets built is grounded in real business needs.
Most designers begin by reviewing Epiphany's draft, then use the chat to ask questions, think through alternatives, or make changes. The full chat history from brief creation carries over, so you pick up exactly where you left off. You can talk to the chat about the brief as a whole, or click on a specific section to focus the conversation there. When a change affects more than one part of the brief, Epiphany will propose revisions across all relevant sections — you decide what to accept.
When you're ready to share the brief with stakeholders, you can export it or invite them directly into the course with view, comment, or editing access.
If you edit the brief after you've already generated an outline or storyboard, Epiphany will ask how you'd like to proceed. You have two options:
Review Epiphany's attention points
The brief includes a list of attention points — things Epiphany has flagged for you to consider before moving on, such as a mismatch between the delivery mode and the learning goal, or a timeframe that may not be realistic for what you're trying to achieve. Treat these as a checklist: review each one and decide whether to act on it. If something needs addressing, you can update the brief directly before proceeding to the outline.
Use the brief for the big picture, not the detail
The brief is the place to define the learning journey at a high level — the audience, the business problem, the delivery mode, the scope. It's not the place to specify instructional strategies or activity types. Instructions like "end each module with a quiz" or "include a case study in module two" can't be acted on at this stage — that level of detail lives in the outline.
Ask Epiphany to explain its reasoning
You don't have to accept the brief as given; and you don't have to guess at the reasoning behind it either. Ask Epiphany why it defined the business problem a certain way, or how it arrived at a particular recommendation. This helps you decide whether you agree, refine what needs changing, and explain the rationale back to stakeholders who may ask the same questions.