How to run a Discovery

What is a discovery?

When delivering digital projects we break up the work into four phases, starting with Discovery. It’s the first phase of the service design and delivery process. It’s about:

  • understanding the problem that needs to solved before you commit to building a service, and 
  • learning about your users and what they want to do, what constraints you may be facing and the opportunities to improve how things are delivered today. 

You can think of the discovery as being a bit like a scoping phase. In order to deliver a successful project, we need to ensure that the scope is well defined and not too wide. A good example is understanding how a digital solution could speed up and streamline applications for school bus passes. An example that is too wide for a discovery could be to understand how we can transform the adult social care system to be more preventative. Instead, you could break down this ambition into smaller, achievable projects. Both these examples start with a challenge. They don’t propose a solution and they don’t assume that we already understand our users fully – this is a key tenant of taking this approach. 

Why do a discovery?

It will help you 

  • work out whether you want to go ahead with the next stage of your project (often known as the Alpha phase). 
  • have a greater understanding of your users (e.g. citizens, businesses, staff, visitors etc.) – their needs, tasks, motivations and goals. 
  • shape how you design and develop the product or service 
  • lower the risk of delivering projects that aren’t fit for purpose and therefore ensures we are spending taxpayer’s money in the best way. 
  • design better services based on what users need 
  • understand where not moving forward with a new service development is the best decision e.g. it may not be cost effective to do so or the identified need may be met by an alternative solution

How to get started

These are some of the things to think about when preparing and running a Discovery. Typically, it is 3-8 weeks long but of course will vary depending on the project and how familiar you and the team are with doing these. You can find more detailed guidance on this in the links below as well as in our section on user research in our Products section.

  • Check your budget and what is available 
  • Bring together your discovery team – these are people that have the skills and capacity to run the discovery (see our section on user research) 
  • Know who is responsible for making decisions 
  • Define the scope and set a goal for your discovery and set some metrics for success 
  • It’s often helpful to set out the problems that you already know and turn these into ‘How might we… statements 
  • Find out who the users are and what they need (see our section on how to structure your user research) 
  • Understand the environment and any constraints – for example there may be technology, legal, policies and strategies, existing services, financial constraints 
  • Analyse the findings and evidence and where possible make this visible and accessible for further use 
  • Work in the open – share your thinking and findings widely e.g. through show and tells with your colleagues, lunch and learn sessions, externally through blog posts 
  • Evaluate and prioritise options and recommendations for what to do next ahead of moving to the next phase 

Example outputs from a disovery

  • User personas characterising the key users of the service
  • User journeys that illustrate the current (as is) journeys identifying users’ pain points and usability issues with the current service or process; and proposed to be journeys that show how the user experience could be improved
  • User needs and stories
  • Wireframes that are quick representations or prototypes that explore what a solution to the problem uncovered during discovery might look like
  • Discovery report summarising the insights gathered during discovery and recommendations for future phases

Who’s on the team?

Typical roles will often include a delivery manager, user researcher and service designer 

Further reading