inspiration-scouting

Inspiration Scouting

The design-scout does competitive research — who else solves this problem and how. Inspiration scouting is different. It finds aesthetic and interaction references that shape the feel of the design, even when they come from completely different domains. A banking app can be inspired by a meditation app's calm. A children's education tool can borrow pacing from a well-designed game.

When to Use

• After design-discovery and design-strategy, before visual design begins
• When the design-lead needs a visual direction and wants reference material
• When the user says "show me some inspiration" or "what could this look like?"
• When the taste profile exists but the project needs a fresh direction within it
• When the team is stuck and needs outside input to break a creative block

Do Not Use When

• The user has already provided specific visual references — use those directly
• The design system is locked and visual direction is predetermined
• The task is a fix or iteration, not a new direction

Process

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:

Project Domain	Look At
Healthcare	Meditation apps (calm), fitness apps (motivation), journaling apps (reflection)
Finance	Productivity tools (clarity), weather apps (data viz), news apps (hierarchy)
Education	Games (engagement), music apps (progression), social apps (community)
E-commerce	Editorial sites (storytelling), gallery apps (browsing), travel apps (discovery)
Enterprise	Consumer apps (polish), design tools (power + clarity), documentation sites (wayfinding)

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:

Reaction	What to Do	Taste Signal
"Love that"	Dig deeper into similar references	Strong positive — record in design-memory
"Not quite"	Ask what's off — too bold? too safe? wrong tone?	Soft negative — refine search
"That but calmer"	The direction is right, the intensity is wrong	Record the adjustment as a taste nuance
"None of these"	Go back to Step 1 and redefine the feel	The inspiration brief needs rewriting
"Number 3, but for the layout, not the colour"	User is compositing — they see the design in pieces	Record which layers resonate separately

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

Integration With Taste Profile

Inspiration is driven by this project's direction — the brief and the live taste calibration from design-taste — not by the cross-project design record. The design-memory record is observational and is not used to pre-filter or steer references; doing so would silently apply one project's habits to another. (If the user themselves says "I usually avoid gradients," that's live direction for this project — honour it because they said it now, not because a record predicted it.)

You may still record new signals into design-memory as observations after the fact (see below) — that's watching, not steering.

Integration

• Called by: design-discovery (to set visual direction), design-strategy (for positioning references), using-designpowers (when user requests inspiration)
• Calls: design-memory (only to record new observations after the fact — never to read constraints that steer the scouting)
• 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

Pattern	Why It Fails
Dumping 20 references without curation	Overwhelms. 5 excellent references with clear "what to take" beats 20 screenshots
Only looking at competitors	Competitors solve the same problem the same way. Cross-domain references unlock fresh approaches
Showing inspiration that violates accessibility	A beautiful reference with 2:1 contrast ratios is not inspiration — it's a cautionary tale. Flag accessibility issues in references
Copying instead of being inspired	Inspiration means "take the quality, not the pixels." Always specify what to take and what to leave
Ignoring this project's stated direction	If the user has said (now) they want a calm, gradient-free look, showing gradient-heavy references wastes their time. Drive from design-taste, not from the cross-project record
Presenting without "what to take"	A reference without a clear lesson is decoration. Every reference needs a reason