Delivery phases

Working in the discovery phase

Content designers are not always part of a discovery team (although they should be wherever possible!).

What is the discovery phase?

Before the team commits to building a service, it needs to understand the problem to solve (or if there is a problem to start with).

A discovery team is usually formed because:

a policy area thinks they might need a service
a legacy system needs to be reviewed or replaced
someone's recognised a user need

What the team learns during the discovery phase will confirm if the work should move forward to alpha or not.

Discovery focus

In the discovery phase you learn about:

your users and what they’re trying to achieve
any constraints, for example, due to technology or legislation
policy intent – the thing government wants to change or make happen
opportunities to improve things

Who you work with on a discovery team

You’ll work on the discovery as part of a multidisciplinary team but every discipline might not be involved at this stage. Each team will be resourced differently depending on the project.

How content designers contribute to a discovery

As a content designer you can help with:

defining user needs
understanding the content users need and when
identifying gaps or areas for further investigation
understanding the end-to-end user journey
working out what the scope will and will not cover

Some content designers may perform these tasks in a discovery, but others may only need to do a few. There’s no defined way to work on a discovery, as every project is different.

The following advice is based on the experience of content designers who have worked in the discovery phase before.

Support your user researcher

It’s important to work closely with your user researcher. They will likely be the busiest person on the team in the discovery phase.

Speak to your user researcher about their expectations of content design and how you can support them. Ways you can work with your user researcher include:

supporting with survey design
adding questions to discussion guides and research questions
attending user research sessions and note-taking
helping to analyse or present research

This will help you understand what users are trying to do, how they go about doing it and the language they use.

Do a content audit

If there’s a clear area you're focusing on in discovery which includes content and guidance, do a content audit. This will help you and the team to map out and understand the information users come across and when as part of the existing journey.

There’s no one way to do a content audit. If you have not done one before or if you need access to Google Analytics or Content Data on Whitehall, speak to your lead content designer or the community for inspiration and advice.

Set up a service-specific style guide or glossary

Pay close attention to the language people use to describe what they’re doing in user research. Add this and any acronyms to a glossary of terms as part of your documentation. You’ll be testing terminology with users in later stages of design, so it’s helpful to understand early on the terms they use.

Do the same for language used internally. If your team or stakeholders use different words to users, find out why. Then, encourage the team to use the same terminology as users as early as possible.

Name your service

You will use everything you’ve learnt during discovery to name the service. This includes reviewing the user needs and user research carried out so far.

Naming the service during discovery means that it can be tested before it’s live. It also means the team are less likely to use a different name internally.

See Naming your service on GOV.UK for tips and good examples.

End of discovery

At the end of a discovery, you’ll work together with your team to create some or all of the following:

user needs
design hypotheses
assessment presentation
mission statements
vision statements

These are created to wrap up the end of discovery and to take to an end-of-discovery check-in.

As a content designer, you can take the lead on some of these artefacts and help to shape the story of the discovery to present to stakeholders.

End-of-discovery check in

The end-of-discovery check in is an informal review of your work in the discovery phase. It's not a service assessment – this happens at alpha and beyond.

Why you need to do an end-of-discovery check in

Use the check in to get feedback and recommendations. Your panel of assessors (so called, even though it’s not an assessment!) are there to help you understand if you've completed your discovery. They're a friendly bunch of people acting in an assurance capacity, not test examiners.

You need to get reassurance at this check in to confirm if you:

have understood what the problem is and the priorities for the team
should move into the alpha phase

How to prepare for an end-of-discovery check in

Think about the best way to show the narrative of your discovery. You need to tell a clear and compelling story. Include things like:

how you've explored the problem space
who are your users and what are their needs
existing services that meet your users' needs
any current user journeys
any existing policy or solution constraints or business requirements
your next steps

You’ll need put together a slide deck, but the check-in will likely be a free-flowing discussion. So, be prepared to deviate from your slides!

During the check-in, you can use whatever you want to tell your story or explain a point – for example, virtual boards, documents, wireframe sketches.

You can add things that are work in progress, as they don't need to be finished. You just want to give the panel a good idea or flavour to your discovery.

Just before the check-in

Your team should share the slide deck with all your artefacts for the panel to read - at least 24 hours before the check-in. This is to give the panel time to get familiar with what you’re going to present and discuss.

After the check-in

The panel will give you a report with practical recommendations and advice.

If the recommendation is to stop the work at the end of discovery, this is not a bad thing – you have not failed! You could be saving time and money better spent elsewhere.

The panel will be positive too - they do tell you what you’ve done well.

Once you get the report, the team and your stakeholders will decide how to act on the recommendations. There might be a follow-up call or workshop. The team can ask for one or both, if you need them.

The team can then confidently communicate the assessors' recommendations with stakeholders and use it to prepare for the next phase if you're confident to continue.

This is the alpha phase.

Cookies on the Defra digital service manual