Answer a few short questions about the brand and the moment you're designing for. This gives you a working vocabulary, a sensory profile, a specific list of things to avoid, concrete next steps, and a recommendation for where a deeper collaboration would start — not a finished brief, but a real first pass in the studio's own language.
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The Sensory Direction Diagnostic is free to use once you're signed in — every input, every calculation, every result. No card required. A paid Studio Membership is optional and adds saving to your Field Log, CSV export, named presets, and sync across every device.
Choose an energy, weight, category, gap, and audience to see your brief.
Current vs. target direction
Calculate a direction, then choose "Set as current state." Change the answers to your aspirational direction and choose "Set as target state" — the axis deltas between the two appear below.
Set both a current state and a target state to see the deltas between them.
Menu drift comparison (from the Cocktail Menu Builder)
When the Menu Builder sends over what a menu actually pours, this shows it against this diagnostic's declared direction — "here's what the bar actually poured this season vs. the direction it declared."
Presets are saved to your Studio Membership archive — subscribe to save and sync them ↗
Saved directions (named presets, distinct from your Field Log)
Compare two directions
Pulls from both your Field Log and your saved presets.
Select two saved or logged directions to compare their axis deltas.
Field notes
This is a hypothesis, not a verdict
The output is a first-pass direction built from your own answers — a structured starting point for a conversation, not market research and not a brand strategy. Its value is that it forces the vague parts of a brief into specific language you can agree or disagree with.
Why energy and weight are separate axes
Most mood frameworks collapse into a single warm-to-cool line, which cannot distinguish a light bright drink from a rich bright one. Keeping energy and weight independent gives nine real positions instead of four, and those two dimensions are what most beverage briefs actually confuse.
The "avoid" list is the useful half
A direction that only says what something should be gives you nothing to reject. Naming what to avoid is what makes a direction operational — it is the part that settles arguments in month three, when everyone remembers the brief differently.
The gap question drives more than it looks like
Your answer on where the category gap sits shapes the familiarity axis and both the avoid and next-step lists, not just the caption. A direction aimed at a crowded category and one aimed at an empty one are genuinely different documents.
Where this stops
It cannot taste anything, does not know your competitors, and has no view on your budget. It is designed to make the first conversation faster and more specific — for actual development work, that is where a collaboration begins.
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Your Field Log
Nothing saved yet. Calculate a direction above, then choose "Save to Field Log" to build a running record on this device.