Discovery talks

Discovery in product design is the early work of finding out what problem is worth solving before deciding what to build. Teams talk to users, explore the context, question their assumptions and test rough ideas, so that later design and development effort goes into the right thing.

Good discovery reduces waste. It helps a team avoid spending months on features nobody needs, and in Lean UX and agile practice it is treated as continuous work rather than a phase that ends when building starts. In a broader creative sense, discovery is also about staying open to the unexpected.

Two talks sit in this topic. Jeff Gothelf shares almost everything he learned from five years of Lean UX at UX Poland in 2016, connecting discovery with experimentation and cross-functional teams. David Carson’s “Design, discovery and humor” was recorded at TED in 2009.