Decide what
you need to find out.

A request for a new screen can contain several questions: whether a person can find the right record, whether the information is available, or whether a different route would be more useful. Those questions need different kinds of evidence.

In an illustrative neighborhood resource directory, adding a map might not address uncertainty about opening hours. The more useful first question could be whether people can identify a suitable resource and understand when its information was last checked. The feature idea is a starting suggestion, not the research result.

Identify the intended user, the task, and the circumstances in which the product would be used. Include relevant constraints such as device access, the information available, or the need to work alongside an existing process.

Then state what the investigation will not examine. A short interaction review, for example, may help explain navigation but not determine technical reliability. An explicit boundary makes the result more useful because readers understand which question it addresses.

Ask what you would do differently after learning the answer. You might revise a proposed flow, investigate a dependency, compare an alternative, or decide that an idea needs more context before proceeding.

A brief can capture the question, the reason it matters, the information already known, and the decision ahead. Avoid requiring the investigation to confirm a preferred solution. If the evidence could not change the next step, reconsider whether the question is sufficiently open and useful. This is planning guidance; actual research arrangements depend on the proposed subject.