What you need to do in discovery

Before you build your service, you need to understand the problem that you want your service to solve. 

You might start your discovery with a particular solution in mind, but you should try not to plan your discovery to confirm the solution you already have. Try to look at the problem you're trying to solve instead - discoveries exist so that you do not just build the thing you think will work before you do discovery.

Defining and investigating your problem with users will help you to gather information to develop ideas for user-based solutions.

There are various ways you can demonstrate and document how you've defined your problem and what work you're going to do to investigate the issue, such as a:

• business case, which includes your scope - this should give the outline of what you're intending to do, i.e. the issue you're looking to solve
• user research plan and user needs - these will help you to understand the people whose problems you're trying to solve

Constraints can be due to things like: 

• legislation - there can be a conflict between what users want and what legislation will allow; you should document what legislation needs to change to help users and what should not be changed

• contracts - you should document what work needs to be undertaken to change contractual obligations, where needed

• legacy technology and existing processes and systems - if digital, call centre or paper-based processes are a constraint on the service you're able to deliver, you should look at documenting a plan to change these processes

A governance framework and terms of reference can help you to document your constraints and anything you're able to do to positively impact them.

You should analyse data to help you make decisions about the service or product you're going to design.

 This can include things like: 

• web analytics of similar digital products or services

• call centre statistics 

• finance reports - these can help you to identify the most cost-effective ways of delivering your service 

• customer testimonials 

• focus group responses 

• surveys and questionnaires 

You should:

• keep a record of all the data sources you find
• document how your data sources will be used
• use your data to inform things like your user research plan

You must ensure that you are collecting and processing users' data legally. This will include providing evidence that you have undertaken a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) for research activities. 

You'll also need to make sure you've done an Equality Impact Assessment (EQIA).

You’ll often find the thing you’re working on is part of a bigger process or user journey. Understanding what that wider journey looks like is key to designing your own service or product. This includes non-digital parts of the wider user journey.

You can document your understanding in things like a storyboard, a user experience map or a user journey map. Creating things like this will help you understand how a user progresses through the different stages of a whole service.

Having a visual aid like a user journey map can also help your stakeholders understand the whole service, and your users, better.

Be ethical and inclusive

You should think about how to remove any barriers that might prevent users taking part in research. You should gather insights from as diverse a range of users as possible, and design for all users.

You can document how you've done this through things like an ethics policy or Equality Impact Assessment and by having a plan to test your service with users who have accessibility or other needs.

Share your user research insights

Your stakeholders should understand how you're including users in the decisions you make. Documenting and sharing your insights from user research is a key way of doing this.

It’s good practice to maintain a list of your stakeholders (both within your service team, organisation and in other organisations) who would benefit from your user research insights. You should also record how your research findings will be shared. You can do this by having a communications plan, which should include what you're looking to share and when. You should also record your user research insights and briefings.