The goal of the Understand phase is to gain deep insights into the users lives, their needs, those of other key stakeholders, the systems context and the environmental factors that may be affected.
I WANT TO EXPLORE THE PROBLEM…
This phase involves an exploration of the current and available knowledge of the systems context combined with extensive user centred research into the potential end-users’ needs, the role of other stakeholders and their interests, as well as the overall environment for the potential innovation.
This research will draw on qualitative techniques; observation and ethnographic research as well as data analytics and more traditional market research. It may involve facilitated workshops with key stakeholders, not only customers but your front line staff to explore the nuances of what the target user or customers are trying to do, the constraints that inhibit them and the opportunities that would open up if only you could help them overcome those challenges.
It also involves examining the context of use, the social, technological, economic and environmental systems in which any new product or service system will operate. It requires deep empathy with people’s lives, their distinctive needs, their perceptions of how relevant organisations currently serve them (if at all), so that you can go beyond just your own perceptions of them. Only by understanding people’s lives, motivations, aspirations, and how they want to be served, can you design a new experience that’s compelling, engaging and creates real and meaningful value.
This phase will include a wide range of activities, and the use of a number of different tools and techniques. Above all it demands empathy not only with the end-users and beneficiaries of the product or service system, but all the other stakeholders and the social and environmental context for the innovation.
WHEN TO BEGIN THIS STAGE
Ideally you should enter into the Understand stage once you have fully completed the Scope stage meaning that you have broad agreement on the project vision and objectives and you have a clear governance model, resources, milestones, dates and deliverables.
It is, however, common to return to this phase at multiple instances in a project. This may be when your assumptions or solutions have been deeply challenged, or it may be that you have a solution and you are trying to understand what the problem is that it serves.
It can also be common to return to the Understand stage when you are evolving your solution in its next iteration and need to engage more deeply with a specific focus for a new feature or audience.
Finally it can also be of value to return to the Understand stage if you have attempted the Ideate stage and found limited inspiration. A lot of the best ideas are natural extensions of a deep understanding of a problem, so if the ideas aren’t compelling enough it can be worth researching more.
What are the OUTCOMES
Understand the users, their environment, the context of use and needs
Identify other key stakeholders
and their relationship to the user as well as their key interests
Understand the systems context and environment in which the current or new service proposition might operate and any key constraints
Translate the findings into a set of key insights and themes that can inform your analysis
CASE STUDY
I want to EXPLORE THE PROBLEM…
By seeing the bigger picture
Introduction
This approach to understanding the problem is about conducting research that can contextualise what you will later learn about people into a broader understanding of a system. The tools provided in this approach offer more of a macro perspective on the issue you are dealing with although all of them will continue to be enriched and evolved as you go deeper into the other approaches that engage with people, so don’t hesitate to continuously return and update these tools as you continue the project.
Use multiple sources of information
Research such as interviews with key stakeholders and experts, as well as secondary research from papers, data analytics, market research, journals, websites, online forums and podcasts etc can all help to build an understanding of the bigger picture. It can lend new information to evolve your stakeholder map and form an understanding of who is key to the problem area you are working in. It can also help form a competitor map, which can help you discern who else is acting in the space already so you might know their different approaches, capabilities or attributes.
Understand the system and the context
A powerful tool here is the system map, which will help you understand the relationships, interactions, and exchanges of value between different actors such as organisations and people and other entities, such as spaces, or technology. These tools can help you depict the social, technological, economic and environmental systems and context in which your new product or service might operate, helping you depict spaces for potential innovation. These outputs should be revisited, refined and deepened as you glean new insight from deeper user research.
I want to EXPLORE THE PROBLEM…
By connecting with real people
Introduction
Connecting with real people is one of the most important components of understanding the problem and indeed one of the most critical to the entire design process. It is only by understanding people’s lives, motivations, constraints and experiences, that you can design a new experience that’s compelling and creates genuine value. The only way that you gain this understanding is by connecting with real people in an authentic way so that you can go beyond your own perspectives. This approach first requires you to accept that your assumptions are likely to be wrong in some way because this open mindset should fuel a more genuine curiosity as you investigate.
This connection with people brings power to your process because each new perspective offers a new lens to examine a problem, which brings new inspiration and opportunities for innovation. It also brings power to your solutions because it enables you to design them appropriately, so they can meet people’s needs and contexts in a more nuanced and appropriate way.
Be inclusive
Each new person whose voice you bring to the table is an additional person whose perspective will be considered in your solution. As we imagine how we will shape the future it is critically important that the future will accommodate us all, so it is equally important that we consider everyone’s perspectives. So as you connect with people for your research, question who is not being considered and bring voices to the table that would perhaps otherwise have been forgotten. Think for example about absent communities, organisations, demographics, staff or people with differing abilities. Their perspective will expand your opportunities for innovation, make your solutions more compelling and shape a more equitable future.
Deeply empathise with people
We offer only two tools in this section, however there are many techniques that can be employed to learn about people’s experience. Often it can be tempting to avoid engaging with people directly and try to reach lots of people through things like surveys - While this may bring more quantitative information, it will lack the richness that can lead to original insight. Although it can be uncomfortable taking the non-expert position of a researcher, it is worth overcoming.
Set up interviews or workshops with people, where you can focus on the issues and get to know who you are designing for. A useful technique is called ‘The 5 Why’s’ which essentially suggests asking ‘why?’ multiple times to drill down into people’s underlying motivations. In workshops or in interviews it’s important to ask open and unbiased questions so there is space for people to tell you things you weren’t already expecting.
Observe people as they go about their day or as they engage with the systems, services or products that surround your problem. By seeing their more natural context firsthand you can witness components of their lives, work or general experience that may never come up in an interview.
Finally, while face-to-face engagement with people is always preferable, techniques such as online ethnography (exploring what people do and say on the internet) and video journaling (people sharing video entries with you) can also help bring more detailed understanding, particularly if a topic is sensitive and face-to-face engagement is not forthcoming.
I want to EXPLORE THE PROBLEM…
By better understanding people’s needs
Introduction
This approach to the ‘Understand’ stage is about organising what you have learnt from engaging with people and systems so that you can articulate the ways in which different people might experience things. As you try to dig deeper to understand the core issues relating to your topic you will be looking for areas of a person’s experience where there are particularly intense challenges. These challenges could be the opportunity areas that you might use to build a solution.
The real difficulty with this task is knowing whose experience is important, given that everyone’s experience is different and also knowing how to map an experience that happens over time, perhaps in multiple places with multiple interactions between people and technologies for instance. The tools described below help you manage these challenges by breaking down the complexity of a multitude of experiences in order to understand people’s needs. They help you to know where the real issues lie and for who.
I want to EXPLORE THE PROBLEM…
By gathering insights
Introduction
In the previous types of activity, you will have gathered a large amount of information from your research. But what does it all mean? In order to move from there to a set of compelling starting points for your concept ideation, it’s important to synthesise your research.
In order to synthesise what you have learned it can often be beneficial for you, and anyone you are working with, to work in an environment where you can freely move things around (for instance, using a large wall with post-its or an online whiteboard). As you go through your research, collect anything you find interesting and significant to the challenge. These might be compelling quotes, tensions, contradictions, surprises, observations about behaviour, particular problems, recurring sayings, particular success strategies or anything else you deem significant. This process can feel messy, but it is this sort of synthesis activity that can bring your learnings together to inform a compelling strategy.
Begin to arrange these pieces of information in different ways. You could try arranging them based on where they might lie in a user journey (helpful to analyse an experience and its pain points), according to who said them, how they fit with specific users (helpful to identify personas and transversal patterns), or simply by emerging themes and topics that seem significant to the issue or appear regularly. With this arrangement of information, you can begin to infer meaning and create insights.
Form insights
An insight is a natural extension of an observation based on your intuition, which allows you and your collaborators to see the problem and opportunities in new ways. As an example: A fact might be, ‘Dogs are often fed twice a day’; An observation might be, ‘They tend to be fed when people eat’; An observation might be, ‘People feel guilty eating in front of their pets’. So, to create an insight, consider an observation, and complete the statement, “I wonder if this means…”.
An insight should not be a fact or an idea, it should not be long-winded and it should not speculate outside what your research is telling you (beyond what is useful for seeing the project in a new light).
An insight should be a concise and logical extension of the observation that explains the observation in a new way. It might feel familiar or obvious once stated, but it can be illuminating and should encourage you and your collaborators to respond with new perspectives and opportunities.
Making these inferences may feel too unscientific, but these creative leaps allow the project to move into innovative new territories with mistakes being discovered later through prototyping with your stakeholders. This process of synthesis can also benefit tremendously from having a wide range of cross-disciplinary collaborators. Additionally, it can be beneficial to include project partners, users and other stakeholders in the process so they can witness the reality of the research themselves and make their own inferences.
