Last week I ran five discovery meetings back to back — a café owner, a fashion brand, a wedding photographer, a small law firm, and a startup founder. Each conversation was different. But by Friday, a pattern had emerged that I wasn't expecting.
Monday: Haruki Coffee
We talked for ninety minutes about coffee, almost none of it about the website. That was exactly right. To design something that feels like a place, you have to understand what the place is about before you open a color palette. I left with twelve pages of notes and a clear sense of the brand's warmth.
Wednesday: The Fashion Client
This one was harder. The brief was polished and precise — but something felt rehearsed. When I asked what the brand meant to the founder personally, the room went quiet. Good design comes from honest answers to uncomfortable questions.
Every client has a real reason they care about this. Finding it is half the job.
The Pattern
By Friday, I noticed that every client who came in with a tight, detailed brief was harder to help than those who came in open and uncertain. The detailed briefs were often a way of avoiding the real conversation. The open ones meant we could start from the actual problem.
I'm going to start every discovery meeting with a different first question: not "what do you want the site to do?" but "what do you want people to feel when they find you online?" It's a small change. I think it will matter.
