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CIRCLES

Comprehend · Identify · Report · Cut · List · Evaluate · Summarise

Lewis Lin's seven-step product design framework, restructured as a prompt. Ideal for feature design, scoping, and product decisions.

The components

  1. CComprehend

    Understand the situation, scope, and unspoken assumptions.

  2. IIdentify

    Identify the user or customer whose needs matter.

  3. RReport

    Report their needs, pains, and jobs-to-be-done.

  4. CCut

    Cut through to the most important problem to solve.

  5. LList

    List candidate solutions.

  6. EEvaluate

    Evaluate the solutions on a clear axis.

  7. SSummarise

    Summarise the recommendation and trade-offs.

Worked example
Rough prompt

We need to design a feature that makes our users save things to read later.

Super-prompt produced by CIRCLES
[Comprehend] The product is a mobile-first news-discovery app. Users complain in App Store reviews that they "lose track of stories I wanted to come back to". We currently have no save mechanism. Scope: design a save-for-later feature; do not redesign the navigation or the home feed.
[Identify] The primary user is the commuter — a 25–45 year old who reads on the go, switches devices between phone and tablet, and engages in short bursts (3–9 minutes per session).
[Report] Their unmet need is the seamless interruption: "let me come back to this story without re-finding it." The pain is the friction of bookmarking in mobile browsers and the cognitive load of remembering which app they were reading in.
[Cut] The core problem is recall and retrieval, not storage. A save feature that hides bookmarks behind two taps is worse than no feature at all.
[List] Candidate solutions: (a) one-tap save on every story card; (b) a system-share-sheet "save to App" target; (c) automatic resumption of the last-viewed story when reopening; (d) an explicit "read later" tab in the bottom nav.
[Evaluate] Score each on discoverability, time-to-save, time-to-retrieve, and implementation cost. Then identify the single solution with the best balance.
[Summarise] Recommend a single solution and articulate the one trade-off the team must accept.

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CIRCLES Prompt Framework — Comprehend · Identify · Report · Cut · List · Evaluate · Summarise · PromptKit