Every successful design project starts with a discovery phase. Common goals in all discovery projects are the need to define the current state of a product, identify pain points, find potential areas to enhance and define next steps. Often clients fail to accept the importance of a discovery phase, and due to budget constraints choose to bypass it, not realizing that “saving” on this phase may be costly at a later part of the project.

What We Discover

When working on any product, there is always a preconceived notion or general direction of what to achieve and how to reach that goal. Internal personnel who deal with day-to-day project development will have ideas of how it should all shape up. They might have some of the best ideas because they know the product best. An outsourced agency will form their own picture of the end result. Problem solving is human nature, but looking at a product from different angles takes work, and the discovery phase is designed for just that.

Analytics: Looking at Some Hard Facts

The goal of the discovery phase is to look at some hard facts, and learn the product’s current state at its code. A deep dive into website analytics will reveal pain points. Traffic patterns and behavior flows can illustrate the way users arrive to a site, the sections they view, time they spend on a page, and where they will go from there.

Learning these patterns can indicate areas that require extra attention, and help prioritize future web projects. While every designer’s dream may be a total rework, the reality is that more often than not, budget and time constraints don’t allow for it, and incremental redesign may be necessary. Analytics point to where work is needed, and measure success rates for any new project.

Customer Service Calls

A great source to dig into during a discovery, if available, is the customer service log. User experience experts know how to read between the lines, and can decipher personal complaints from real platform issues. When going through logs, UXers will look for patterns and noise around specific issues. Often customer calls reveal existing platform bugs, but many times they lead to UX issues experienced along the way.

Reviewing Open Bug Reports & Requests

Reviewing the list of open bugs will supply an overview to existing website issues, and in return may shed light on UX matters. Reviewing the process of how items are reported and handled may teach a UX expert how internal teams work, and show which processes may be streamlined.

Open tickets may indicate business goals for the near future. Why do we want to know about existing projects during the discovery phase? Knowledge is power. Our goal during a discovery phase is to know everything we can about the product, company and teams involved.

While User Experience has its own tone of voice, it’s important that all members of an organization can share and communicate. When partnering with us, we become part of your team. We learn how your team currently operates, not only so we can know the product as well as your internal personnel, but also so we can make the best recommendations for your company and its end-users.