Discover
Ready-made templates for the Discover stage, online or to print.
Templates for the Discover stage
The Discover stage builds knowledge about the problem and about the people who experience it. The templates are waiting in Canva. You can work on them online or download and print them.
- 1Gather informationCombine primary sources (interviews and observations) with secondary ones (reports, studies, articles). The most valuable insights come from contact with the people the problem affects.
- 2Organise it togetherUse a mind map, an empathy map, a persona and a user journey. Each sticky note is one insight.
- 3Note your conclusionsTake what surprised you and move on to the Define stage. You can always come back to Discover along the way.
Templates and methods of the Discover stage
It gathers the team’s intuitions and knowledge before the research, and afterwards helps organise what you found out. A keyword with a picture sits in the centre.
It reveals hidden dimensions of users’ experience: what they see, hear, say and do, what they fear and what they expect.
It gathers the discoveries into one character, with a story, motivations and needs. It teaches you to think of users as whole people.
It maps out the stages of an experience: what the person does, thinks and feels, and where the opportunities for improvement lie.
How AI supports the Discover stage
AI summarises many academic sources and presents the state of knowledge at the start. Check the key information in the original sources.
Ask AI for five successive “why” questions about your problem, for example low attendance at cultural events.
In voice mode, ask AI to play a person from your target group and rehearse the interview. Real contact with people remains essential.
More design tools