UX Discovery Process from Experts: Pitfalls and Bottlenecks

The UX discovery process is a key phase in every project that involves product development. It allows you to identify your target users and their expectations, as well as define the product’s main features.

Besides, losses in the next stages can be huge, and missing deadlines can make a lot of noise. In this article, we will explain what the Discovery Process is, how it works at ProCoders, and how we can help you with this stage of the development process to avoid big losses!

What is UX Discovery?

User experience discovery is a preliminary phase in the UX design that involves researching the problem space, framing the problem(s) to be solved, and gathering enough evidence and initial direction on what to do next.

This phase is crucial for setting a solid foundation for any digital project. By thoroughly understanding the problem space, you can reduce potential issues down the track and avoid wasting time and money on a project that may not meet user needs.

Essentially, the discovery phase is about laying the groundwork for a successful design process, ensuring that the project is aligned with user needs and business goals from the outset.

When to Turn to the Design Discovery Process

UX discovery is primarily used at the beginning of a project, before the design phase, to ensure that the project is set up for success. This phase is invaluable for researching new and open-ended insights, understanding user behavior and needs, and identifying opportunities for innovation and improvement. However, user experience discovery isn’t limited to the project’s start.

It can also be used throughout the project lifecycle to validate assumptions, gather feedback, and iterate on the design. By continuously engaging in discovery, you can ensure that the project remains user-centered and responsive to changing needs and insights.

People Involved in UX Discovery

A successful UX discovery phase is best performed by a small multidisciplinary team that includes stakeholders, project managers, researchers, designers, and technical experts. This team should be dedicated full-time to the project and ideally be collocated when working in person. Key roles in this team include:

• UX Researcher: Responsible for conducting user research and gathering data. They play a crucial role in understanding user needs and behaviors.
• UX Designer: Analyzes the data collected and creates design concepts that address user needs and business goals.
• Project Manager: Oversees the project, ensuring it stays on track and meets deadlines.
• Stakeholders: Provide input and feedback on the project, ensuring it aligns with business objectives.
• Technical Experts: Offer technical expertise and guidance, ensuring the feasibility of design concepts.

By involving a diverse team, you can ensure that all aspects of the project are considered and that the final product is both user-friendly and technically sound.

User Research in the Phase

User research is the process of getting to know your users so that you can create products and services that meet their needs. Exploratory research is a vital phase in the discovery process that generates new insights and understanding of user needs, behaviors, and motivations.

The objective of user discovery research UX is to learn about what people need and want, how they use products or services, and how they feels about them. This information helps UX designers build better solutions by providing insights into what motivates people to take action or respond in certain ways. At ProCoders, we do 3 main discovery phases:

• value proposition guided research;
• workflow and process research;
• usability research.

Value Proposition Guided Exploratory Discovery Research UX

When you begin the discovery research UX, you must look at the big picture. What are the project’s goals? What does success look like for this project?

At ProCoders, we believe (and that is what we say to every client) that the goals should be ambitious but realistic. Engaging key stakeholders during this stage is crucial, as they help set these ambitious yet achievable goals. If you want to create a new Facebook, then you should be ready that it wouldn’t take 2 months and $1000 dollars of the cost!

Workflow and Process Research

Workflow and process research are vital parts of your discovery UX phase. You must understand your audience and how they will interact with your product/service.

Focus groups are a valuable qualitative research method that facilitates in-depth discussions among participants about specific topics, revealing deeper insights by encouraging individuals to expand on each other’s thoughts.

When conducting workflow and process research for our clients’ products/services, ProCoders helps them:

• Understand the context in which decisions are made by the user, including their environment (physical), activities (mental), goals (what they hope to accomplish by using the service), and hierarchy of needs (what drives them). We also consider their level of expertise, whether they are beginners or advanced users.
• Learn about common tasks that users have when using the product/service, as well as ways in which they might accomplish these tasks – this will help guide us when thinking about creating solutions later on during the ideation phase!

Usability Research

Usability research is observing people interacting with a product or service to determine how easy it is to use. The integration of quantitative research methods provides measurable data, enabling a more scientific understanding of user behavior and preferences. Usability testing helps understand what works and what doesn’t work for users (and why).

In usability research, we thoroughly consider every detail that might improve users’ experience while using a product. For example, if a product is created for young people, their experience with applications allows them to navigate new products more quickly.

Therefore, you can remove some additional explanations for navigating the interface and add more modern solutions. If your audience is older, the font used for the interface should be bigger. In this case, it is also necessary to pay attention to the contrast of the text/elements so that it is easier to read.

Other conditions should be considered, too. For example, if we are designing a running mobile application, external conditions, such as the bright sun outside, will be very important. If you create an application with only a dark theme, it will be a fiasco because nothing will be visible in the sun.

Stakeholder Interviews

Stakeholder interviews are an essential part of the UX discovery process. These interviews provide valuable insights into the project’s goals, objectives, and constraints. Stakeholders may include project sponsors, product owners, business analysts, and technical experts.

The goal of stakeholder interviews is to gather information about the project’s requirements, identify potential roadblocks, and ensure that everyone is aligned on the project’s objectives. By engaging stakeholders early in the process, you can ensure that their perspectives are considered and that the project is set up for success.

UX Discovery Process

The main task of the discovery is to find flaws or prevent problems that you may face while developing a product. Exploratory user research is a critical initial phase in the discovery process, including methods like interviews and contextual inquiries. If this is an existing product, you can extract the metrics and see if all the buttons on the site are clickable and make sense.

When doing a new project, there are some blocks that users ignore. There can be a million reasons for this. Maybe there are too many elements on the page that prevent the attention from focusing on the main things, or the page is too long, and the user becomes uninterested. In this case, we usually arrange A/B testing.

The process often depends on the duration of the UX design discovery phase, the project’s size, and the client’s needs.

Outputs and Deliverables of UX Discovery

The outputs and deliverables of the UX discovery phase may vary depending on the project’s requirements, but common outputs include:

• User Personas: Detailed descriptions of the project’s target audience, helping to ensure that the design is user-centered.
• User Journeys: Visual representations of the user’s experience, highlighting key interactions and pain points.
• Service Blueprints: Diagrams that illustrate the service’s ecosystem, showing how different elements interact.
• User Flows: Diagrams that illustrate the user’s flow through the service, helping to identify potential bottlenecks.
• Wireframes: Low-fidelity sketches of the service’s interface, providing a visual guide for the design.
• Design Concepts: High-fidelity designs of the service’s interface, showing how the final product will look and function.
• Research Reports: Detailed reports of the research findings, providing evidence to support design decisions.
• Recommendations: Actionable recommendations for the project’s next steps, ensuring that the design is feasible and aligned with user needs.

These outputs and deliverables provide a solid foundation for the project’s next phase, ensuring that the design is user-centered, feasible, and meets the project’s objectives.

Discovery Process Bottlenecks

As you know, the discovery process UX is a very important project stage. The main goal is to understand your audience and create a product according to their needs. To optimize their experience with the product, it is necessary to consider all aspects: from a user’s point of view, your business goals, and the technical side.

At this stage, ProCoders conducts a competitive analysis of the product. If the competitive analysis isn’t conducted before starting work on design discovery ux concepts, then you will face problems like:

• missing important functionality;
• being behind competitors who already have such things in their products;
• lacking innovative approaches;
• duplicating ideas already used by other companies (for example, Uber didn’t invent ride-sharing).

Research Methods in the UX Discovery Phase

No matter how good your designer or developer is: if they don’t know what users want, they won’t be able to produce great products. Much of the UX research should be done in order to understand better what users need.

User interviews are essential as a qualitative research method in user experience (UX) research, helping gather in-depth insights about user needs, behaviors, and motivations. So that’s why our team tries to find out as much as possible about the user during this project stage.otivations. So that’s why our team tries to find out as much as possible about the user during this project stage.

The best way to research the user journey is to make a prototype. It is immediately visible when a dead end is reached and what is missing in the user script, allowing filling the holes. For example, when you are in an online store, add something to the cart, and want to pay, but you need to register. Will your purchases be saved after all these actions?

What Key Business Opportunities UX Research Process Open for Product Owners?

The discovery phase UX opens several key business opportunities for product owners. With it, you can:

• Redirect your focus towards creating value for your users, instead of focusing on how much money can be made from each feature/product feature (which may not even be used). This will also help eliminate potential bottlenecks during development since it encourages creative thinking rather than constantly trying new things out of sheer curiosity.
• Identify the business goals you want to accomplish by building a product or service and ensure that those goals align with your users’ needs. This will help set the right expectations and identify the key business opportunities associated with your project.
• Set up an experiment-driven approach where you can become a user, not a creator. Then, you can use the information to develop solutions that address users’ challenges and efficiently solve their problems.

How ProCoders Can Help in UX Discovery Phase?

The ProCoders outstaffing company offers a step-by-step approach to the user experience design and software development discovery phase that helps you understand your users better. Our team will work with you throughout all project stages — from defining your goals and strategy to prototyping ideas, testing them, and refining them based on the results.

We use tools like Hotjar to gain insight into how users use products like yours and then plan out ways to improve them using our expertise in UX strategy and prototyping tools like Figma or Axure Prototypes.

ProCoders’ designers have more than ten years of experience, and we have already held the UX research session with such projects as Expandigo, SDCN (Same Day Courier Network), etc. As for the latter, SDCN already had a reputation as a high-tech solution for transport companies. But as the years passed after their initial build, SDCN needed to build a new tech infrastructure to maximize its mobile reservation opportunities. So, they came to ProCoders to help get them there. 

This way, the UX research can be useful not only for new products but also for already existing ones. If you already have a project but feel that something can be improved, you can use our UX discovery service. ProCoders will be happy to analyze your product, find the main problems, and give you solutions to them. 

What’s more: after the discovery phase UX, you can also hire a dedicated team or order IT staff augmentation services that will help you develop your product! UI / UX designers, front-end and back-end developers – all these professionals can be hired with Procoders. 

ProCoders Smash Experience in Discovery Phase for UX for Startups

At first glance, you may think that ProCoders works only with big projects. However, our answer is “No”: we work with anyone who needs help with their UX discovery phase activities!

Our UX design team is skilled at helping entrepreneurs and startups discover the best approach for their products (e.g., conducting user research, designing prototypes, and facilitating usability tests). We have worked with a wide range of startups from all over the world.

One of our recent clients was a startup called Dryft. Dryft’s goal was to give people the ability to find and book individual fitness classes that were offered in areas and settings that were interesting and convenient. Dryft wanted its app to have deep capabilities for both fitness class operators and students, so it created some difficulties. 

The UX Design Discovery Phase took 4 weeks, during which Procoders researched all the requirements needed for every app function. These were programming languages, plug-ins, platforms, and widgets. Each option was considered for its versatility, interoperability, cost, and function. When the right tools were chosen, a work plan was created with an eye toward speed and maximizing the budget.

At ProCoders, we understand that every startup is different, so we approach every project with an open mind and a willingness to learn about your business goals and objectives. However, we always have some general recommendations. For example, if you want some microservices, Procoders don’t recommend you do them. Why? Microservices are a good thing for big projects with huge resources, where all tasks should be divided into subprojects. However, it’s not usually the same story for startups. That’s why, in this case, we use other technologies. 

Here are some of the things we can help with:

• Discovering your audience and understanding their needs;
• Creating personas based on the discovery UX research findings to define your ideal customer profile;
• Making a prototype of your product to understand what it may lack from the user perspective;
• Calculating the budget based on your product vision and setting the time frames needed for the development.

Conclusion

UX Discovery journey is a key phase of the UX Design Process. The process of UX research starts with defining the scope of a project, deciding on the audience, and analyzing competitor sites. Next comes brainstorming and information gathering, followed by prototyping and usability testing. It’s critical to consider all aspects before moving forward with your design so that you can produce a high-quality product. 

If you’re looking to outsource UX/UI design or just find UX/UI designer ProCoders can help! Our UX designers are trained in user experience research and UX research methods and will work closely with you to create a plan that meets your needs.

P.S.: Have discovery questions? Read our FAQ!