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

If a taste profile exists (design-memory):

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")
Highlight alignment — when a reference matches a strong opinion, note it: "This matches your preference for generous whitespace"
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

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 the taste profile	If the user dislikes gradients and you show gradient-heavy references, you're wasting their time
Presenting without "what to take"	A reference without a clear lesson is decoration. Every reference needs a reason

inspiration-scouting