Pre-Discovery: Ask better questions, get better answers

To be or not to be..? ...what was the question??!?

Safe to say Hamlet's famous soliloquy wouldn't have the long lasting existential and philosophical impact it has, if he didn't know what question he was asking. His very human problem, prompted a very human question.

So, let's use Hamlet as the clunky springboard to introducing the concept of the pre-discovery.

Granted, your initial reaction could be that it sounds like a headache, a lot of extra work. But in reality, investing in a pre-discovery could save you both time and money, whilst ensuring the best outcomes for your organisation.

Below, Client Partner Tom, talks about the pre-discovery work we did for the London Fire Brigade and how it unlocked the institutional knowledge that was key to the success of a very important digital tool.

Urgh, project governance

Let's face it, nobody loves discovery phases. Even project purists have pangs for just getting on with “the work.” Once a project gets underway to bring something into the world, it’s hard to stomach starting with a wholly conceptual phase.

But despite our collective impatience, we've probably all seen that a well-run discovery phase sets up success in the initial product development and also beyond; setting a vision and guiding both initial and future development.

Think of building or renovating a home. The invisible parts, like underlay, are crucial for comfort and durability. There’s a little sting in paying for something you’ll never see it after the day it’s laid, but you will keep feeling the benefits. Sound and heat insulation, comfort and durability, and comfort underfoot.

I’m always going to advocate for thinking before doing, whether following a project methodology or not. Discovery phases answer key questions before investing in the deliverables. This reduces uncertainty and increases the likelihood of success, because you start with a clear understanding of users' needs and expectations. 

But I also offer you a note of caution: discovery phases can go bad.

Preparing to prepare

If you have a solid insight about the likely users of what your project will deliver, even if incomplete, you can probably follow a well-structured discovery process and get a lot of value from it.

But sometimes, especially when breaking new ground, those insights can be hard to come by.  This is a problem because projects without human insights become about the making of, not the benefits of whatever it is you’re building.

Discovery is effective when you have a good sense of the human needs and need specific answers of how best to fulfil them. But what if the problem that you're trying to solve is still unclear? If you go into a discovery process of exploration, who knows where you could end up? Undoubtedly lots of interesting things would be uncovered, but not necessarily all of them might truly be valuable to people.

We're going on a strategic adventure

A pre-discovery phase can help.

This short phase exists to refine the question and make educated choices before the discovery process begins. It helps ensure that discovery brings back valuable answers. Then, whatever gets built is more likely to be successful once launched because you start off with a clear understanding of the expectations and traits of the people that will use it.

That is exactly what we have done with the London Fire Brigade.

They needed a scalable solution but wanted help refining the priority audiences in advance of user research as part of discovery. A pre-discovery phase helped them understand their target users and develop hypotheses about their motivations. This human-centred approach ensured the solution would be effective for the businesses they were assisting.

LFB is surely the authority on fires that have happened in London. But it is unfeasible for them or anyone else to build a data-driven picture of all the many occasions when a fire was prevented. More specifically, there’s nothing empirical about what caused someone to invest the necessary rigour to ensure their premises and people are safe by complying with the regulations. It can't just be the threat of fines, as most people take the necessary steps much earlier than the point at which they would face legal implications.

There isn’t a dataset that could show the motivations of these people; the kinds of people they are, their motivations, etc. It’s unknowable, and unfeasible to find out. Which in turn means we can’t take their needs, expectations, traits and hopes into a discovery process. Or can we?

Better questions give better answers 

We needn’t start from scratch. Pre-discoveries can be done quickly. They focus on four key activities:

1. Determining the need and capture organisational drivers.
2. Gather existing insights, sorting them into knowns and unknowns.
3. Identify people who can add value to the project.
4. Get the fundamentals down, specifying what needs to be answered in discovery.

So,  we ran a short pre-discovery to take the unknowns and substitute them for informed ideas. Using knowledge from various sources, we were able to come up with some broad characteristics of the kinds of users.

1. We combined the experience of fire-prevention professionals with that of those of us who routinely conduct wider research into human behaviour, to create some classifications of potential users that can guide research selection.
2. We drew upon existing datasets to arrive at some sensible research priorities. This isn’t necessarily about finding the most frequent data points but the most representative: the ones that if you made an improvement the effects would be felt more widely. There’s also great value in finding and recording gaps in data or understanding.
3. We identified several hypotheses—circumstances grounded in general, observable human truths—that can be tested and ruled in or out as relevant during user research in the discovery phase.
4. We then figured out the other necessary steps that would be needed across various disciplines during discovery to bring certainty about what is to come.

A voyage of pre-discovery

The risk with a pre-discovery is that it is allowed to stumble into the discovery phase itself. It takes discipline to interrogate and improve the question without leaping ahead to the answers. Pre-discoveries can also significantly shorten the amount of time needed to complete a discovery phase—and the project overall—but if a pre-discovery leaps ahead, there’s a risk that benefit may not be felt.

A pre-discovery phase unpacks a business case meaningfully without adding extra bureaucracy. It articulates why the product should exist and whether the project is worth pursuing, providing a streamlined brief that drives efficiencies down the line. That way, pre-discovery keeps the scope of discovery tight, leading to faster progress, lower costs, and better outcomes. 

By taking the time to adopt a rigorous human-centric approach, LFB began their discovery with a strong sense of their challenge and reasonable assumptions about how to prevail.

So, to discovery or pre-discovery..?

Let's help you find out. Get in touch.