Before I opened a single Figma file at Apple, I read the brief three times.

Not because I was told to. Because I'd learned — the hard way — that the brief is where the real design work happens. Everything after that is execution. The decision about what to make, why to make it, and who it's for? That lives in the brief.

I've watched designers with incredible talent get stuck in revision loops because they skipped this step. They designed something beautiful that solved the wrong problem. The brief told them exactly what the problem was — but they assumed they already knew.