The Lean UX Method

Framing the problem

Many designers are used to receive design briefs from a manager who usually deal directly with the customers and synthesise the requests into a single page. As designers progress in their careers, they get to deal directly with the clients who quite often require some guidance on how to communicate their needs.
Without a method to guide the clients, the design process can be extended far from comfortable and profitable and results could end up completely far from what the client wanted.

One of my best example I remember is from a client from the fibre optic network design industry who requested a simple icon for a software they were working on. This is what I received. I recommend to read it all:

“The module takes the output from the FSAM Solver (the cables and joints) and rewrites the IDs of cables and joints and the START_ NODE_ID and END_NODE_ID of the cables. It’s used by planners when they make manual changes after running the FSAM Solver.
For more detail (and a very simplistic example): It starts at an LJL (that’s a joint) and renumbers the LSS cables (there IDs) that come from the LJL (usually up to 4 LSS come off an LJL). It updates the START_NODE_ID of these cables with the ID of the LJL. It then updates the IDs of the AJLs which connect to the LSS cables, and updates the END_NODE_IDs of the LSS cables. It then updates the IDs of the MSS cables, and the START_NODE_IDs of the MSS cables using the IDs of the AJLs. and so on and so forth.
(note sure how much of this you already know…) It would usually have LJL – LSS – AJL – MSS – MPT – SDS – PCD. It would be like a tree with one LJL, upto 4 LSS coming from the LJL and an AJL at the end of each, up to 10 MSS coming from each AJL and a MPT at the end of each and then up 8 SDS coming from each MPT with a PCD at the end of each. Obviously, any logo doesn’t need to include all that detail.. but hopefully it helps for thinking about ideas.
let me know if you want any more/different info.

Cheers”

Scientist are usually not the best communicators. Although this example is quite an “edge case”, it is not uncommon in my profession to receive this kind of requests.

After digging a bit and expending few hours in back and forward communication, the translation of the request to a normal human language was:
“We have a software that helps to join 2 separated fibre optic cables. Can you create an icon for this?”