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What is Discovery?
What is Discovery?
Leisa Reichelt – 10 November 2015
Tags:
Service design (/taxonomy/term/64) User research (/taxonomy/term/47)
Digital Service Standard (/taxonomy/term/54)
Discovery is where we discover. It sounds trite but it’s true. Discovery is where we explore how
government services might be presented online so that people can do what they need to do,
without having to understand how government works.
I think the Discovery stage is one of the most important – but probably the least understood –
in the whole design process. It can be tempting to jump in and just start building something,
but before you do, you need to create a picture of what users need – not what you think they
need.
We need to make sure that we have an accurate, human-centred (not project-centred)
understanding of our users and what they want from us. For example, people don’t renew their
passport because they want to, they renew because they have to so they can travel abroad or
prove who they are. Understanding the context of why people are engaging with us helps us
design better services.
We recently completed a Discovery stage for the GOV.AU prototype. Here's what we did to
make sure we got our work off to a good start:
Focus on user research
Understanding your users is the most important thing in Discovery and will take the most
effort. Make sure you have a full-time embedded user researcher in your team from day one –
ideally someone who will stay with the project into Alpha – get out in the field with them as
quickly as possible to meet and observe end users.
You should be doing mostly qualitative user research, and ideally in the context of use (their
home or workplace for example). Don't just gather together all the research that has ever been
done before… this is useful, but it doesn’t take the place of your team doing hands on
research.
Understand the big picture
Make sure you understand the wider context for your project - what is the actual thing that
people are doing when they encounter your service (eg. they’re not just registering their
company name, they’re starting a business). Pay attention to the role that others are playing in
the user’s broader journey – these influencers might include other parts of government or
commercial or charitable organisations.
Make maps
You can make journey maps (based on real customer experiences, not ideal workflows), maps
of user needs,
Wardley maps (http://www.wardleymaps.com/), and maps of the service
environment (this is a
great example from the UK
(https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/08/18/mapping-new-ideas-for-the-digital-justice-system-2/))
Make sure that you don't need domain knowledge or jargon to understand these maps, and
you’ll create a great basis to ensure anyone working in or with the team can get a shared
understanding quickly.
Don't start designing just yet!
It’s tempting to start designing and building things quickly. That's great, but try not to validate
your early ideas too fast or before you've developed a good understanding of the problems
and issues.
Remember, Discovery is for discovering, not validating. The time for designing and making
things is Alpha, and that’s coming soon!
Leisa Reichelt is the Head of Service Design at the Digital Transformation Agency.
© Commonwealth of Australia. With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and
where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 license.
