Inspiration Scouting

Step 1: Define the Inspiration Brief

Before searching, define what you're looking for:

## Inspiration Brief

**Project:** [Name and one-line description]
**Feel we're going for:** [2-3 adjectives — e.g., "calm, confident, playful"]
**Feel we're avoiding:** [2-3 adjectives — e.g., "clinical, childish, corporate"]
**Taste constraints:** [From taste profile — known preferences and anti-patterns]
**Domain:** [The project's domain — e.g., "pet care", "fintech", "education"]
**Cross-domain openness:** [How far outside the domain to look — same domain / adjacent / anywhere]
**Specific needs:** [e.g., "onboarding flow inspiration", "dashboard layout patterns", "empty state ideas"]

Step 2: Search Across Layers

Inspiration operates at multiple layers. Search each:

Visual Layer

• Colour: Palette approaches, colour psychology, brand colour usage
• Typography: Type pairing, scale, weight distribution, editorial vs UI
• Layout: Grid systems, density, whitespace philosophy, asymmetry
• Imagery: Photography style, illustration approach, iconography
• Surface: Texture, depth, glassmorphism, neumorphism, flat — what's appropriate

Interaction Layer

• Navigation: Patterns, transitions between views, wayfinding
• Feedback: How the interface responds — micro-interactions, loading, success, error
• Onboarding: First-run experiences, progressive disclosure, tutorials
• Data entry: Form patterns, input methods, validation approaches
• Empty states: What the app feels like before there's content

Emotional Layer

• Personality: How the interface expresses character through details
• Pacing: Fast and efficient vs slow and contemplative
• Trust signals: How the interface builds confidence
• Delight moments: Where and how the interface surprises positively
• Restraint: What the interface deliberately does not do

Step 3: Curate a Mood Board

Compile findings into a structured mood board. Quality over quantity — 5 excellent references beat 20 mediocre ones.

For each reference:

### [Reference Name]
**Source:** [App/site/product name and what it does]
**Why it's relevant:** [1-2 sentences connecting this to the project brief]
**What to take:** [The specific element or quality to learn from]
**What to leave:** [What doesn't apply — this prevents wholesale copying]
**Taste alignment:** [How it connects to the user's taste profile]
**Layer:** Visual / Interaction / Emotional

Step 4: Cross-Domain Connections

The best inspiration often comes from outside the project's domain. Actively seek cross-domain references:

Don't force connections — but don't limit yourself to competitors either.

Step 5: Present the Board

Present inspiration to the user and the design-lead as a curated collection:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  INSPIRATION BOARD
  For: [Project Name]
  Feel: [target adjectives]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  VISUAL DIRECTION
  ◆ [Reference 1] — [what to take]
  ◆ [Reference 2] — [what to take]

  INTERACTION PATTERNS
  ◆ [Reference 3] — [what to take]
  ◆ [Reference 4] — [what to take]

  EMOTIONAL TONE
  ◆ [Reference 5] — [what to take]

  CROSS-DOMAIN WILD CARD
  ◆ [Reference 6] — [unexpected connection]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  Does any of this resonate? I can dig deeper
  into any direction or find more references.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Step 6: Refine Based on Response

The user's reaction to inspiration is a powerful taste signal:

After refinement, update the inspiration brief with what resonated and pass it to design-lead as part of their brief.

Integration With Taste Profile

If a taste profile exists (design-memory):

1. Pre-filter — do not include references that match known anti-patterns unless you're deliberately challenging a pattern ("I know you usually avoid X, but this example does it in a way that might change your mind")
2. Highlight alignment — when a reference matches a strong opinion, note it: "This matches your preference for generous whitespace"
3. Test soft patterns — use inspiration reactions to confirm or reject soft patterns in the taste profile

Integration

• Called by: design-discovery (to set visual direction), design-strategy (for positioning references), using-designpowers (when user requests inspiration)
• Calls: design-memory (to read taste constraints and record new signals)
• Hands off to: design-lead (with curated references as visual brief), design-strategist (with emotional/UX references)
• Pairs with: design-memory, design-debate (inspiration can trigger a debate on direction)
• Updated by: User reactions — every "love it" or "not for me" is a taste data point

Anti-Patterns