UX Discovery: what it is, why it’s essential and how I go about it

The discovery phase sets a solid foundation for a digital project.

A solid foundation helps organisations reduce problems down the track. The discovery phase is quite involved, but really it boils down to this: starting a digital project on a solid foundation so that precious time and money isn’t wasted setting the project in a bad direction.

Definition: A discovery is a preliminary phase in the UX-design process that involves researching the problem space, framing the problem(s) to be solved, and gathering enough evidence and initial direction on what to do next. Discoveries do not involve testing hypotheses or solutions.

– via NNGroup

I’d argue that the majority of digital projects in existence start off on the wrong foot. The scope is too big, the creative direction is off, too much focus on the technical server and programming details and too little focus on the resulting user experience — the whole point of the project in the first place. No clear understanding of the problem that’s being solved, no vision, let alone a shared vision that the whole team can get behind.

Companies who don’t invest in a few weeks of discovery at the beginning of a project, always end up investing 2x, 4x, 8x that amount in fixing things later.

Just like in architecture and the construction of houses and buildings, sometimes, it’s so costly to fix a project that’s built on a poor foundation, that it becomes more cost-effective to knock it down, and start from scratch. That’s a very costly learning experience!

As such, UX discovery is an important business de-risking exercise, perhaps the most important of the entire project. It’s the vision which will guide the design phase, which will subsequently guide the development phase and all the thousands, or millions of lines of code that will be subsequently written. All of this will rest on the assumptions and design decisions that are made at the very beginning.

So… what’s required for a solid foundation?

• Understand the present. If there is an existing app, one needs to know it’s strengths and weaknesses. This can be done by talking to users and stakeholders, by looking at analytics data, by performing a product audit, and by performing a comparative / competitor analysis to understand “where the industry is at” so we can understand “where the bar is”, before we go about meeting and exceeding that bar.
• Create a shared vision of the future. With special emphases on the word “shared” there. This is where we build on the comparative research by brainstorming, prioritising and selecting the core features of the product. Next, I will take this creative direction and create high-level mockups which will be the guiding compass for the design phase, which follows the development phase.

What’s involved in the discovery phase?

It all depends on the project. I’ll always create a bespoke plan for each project. Simple projects on small startups with just one or two key decision makers? Less involved. Complex projects in large multi-team organisations, with lots of unknowns and unaligned goals? Much more involved. To give you an idea, a typical discovery phase might involve any of the following:

Stakeholder interviews.

In large organisation I want to get a quick understanding of all the key people involved in the project, and what their thoughts are regarding the project. I want to bring in all key decision makers right away in order bring any potential risk forward, which will make the process smoother going forward.

UX review.

Heuristics review, in design lingo. An expert look at the strengths and weaknesses of the current product, all summarised in a dot point list of key takeaways.

User research.

Review of existing user research or some guerrilla research (whether in the form of user interviews or a survey) of my own in order to get an understanding of the key user pain points.

Comparative research board.

Or “mood board” as I’ll more commonly refer to it. This board will be a sample of all the current competitors, or industry leaders, examples of great experiences, inspiration for features and how these are implemented well. This board will act as the creative inspiration source which we’ll use to create the best vision for our product.

Feature priority matrix.

Scope creep is a risk factor for projects. There is no right amount of scope for every project. Some projects are just larger in nature, and that’s fine. What we want to make sure, though, is that every feature is incorporated for good reason, and prioritising the features allows us to lock in the feature set and prioritise the design and build of the product.

Creation of user personas.

Proto personas to be exact. This will help us better understand who our users are and create a design vision which will cater to all key personas.

Service blueprints.

A service blueprint allows us to understand both the user experience and the back-of-the house processes that need to be in place to support each point in the experience.

User flows diagrams.

Mapping out the key flows helps us better understand the logic of the app or site. It gives us a holistic map of the whole experience.

High-level mockup.

The detailed design of all pages doesn’t start until the design phase. But by the end of the discovery phase I often mock up one or two key pages to crystallise the vision and as a guiding compass for the design phase which is to follow.

No time to waste

The turnaround of a discovery phase is around 2–3 weeks.

Getting clients onboard this process can be a challenge because they often see these 2–3 weeks as time wasted not starting on the design/development work. I’ve witnessed many such projects. They all, without exception, suffer from far bigger delays, design debt and UX problems down the track.

Prerequisites

In order for me to complete this foundational phase in your project properly, and help lay a solid foundation for the work to come, I will need the following things in place before I get started:

• Appoint one key decision maker. There will no doubt be many voices that seek to influence the direction of the project, and we’ll hear them all in the stakeholder interviews. During the creation of the vision we need one person to act as tiebreaker in case there are conflicting visions or duplicate directions that need to be synergised into one unified vision. This person should have the senior clout required to make strategic decisions for the project.
• Access to all key stakeholders. We want to bring forward all key influencers for the project, in order to talk with them at the start of the discovery phase and to present my work to them for feedback as I create the work.
• Access to users. Many organisations will spend bucketloads of money and sink in months of work into a project without talking to a single user. It’s almost as if they are creating work that will be consumed by machines, not people. If you’ve done user research before then I’ll ask for this information. If you haven’t, and the product is complex, then I’ll ask for a list of 5–8 users that we can interview to better understand the people who we are designing for, their pain points and what they need exactly.
• Access to analytics data. Data can sometimes tell a story. If there’s a large drop-off on a specific page or view, that’s a cause for investigation. If you already use analytics software on your site or app (if you don’t, then that’s step #1 for us), then I want to gain access to this data to understand how the product is currently being used.

What’s next?

With a clear understanding of the status quo and a clear vision for the future, and with everyone onboard this vision, we can now tackle the design phase with confidence, knowing that we’re building on solid ground.