/inspiration-scouting

name: inspiration-scouting
description: Use when the team needs aesthetic references, interaction examples, or visual inspiration beyond competitive research — finds design patterns, UI references, and creative approaches that match the brief and taste profile

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 th