In our UX community, we are now re-designing our Discovery phase, introducing Ethnography and Ethnographic methods.
Since Discovery is an exploratory phase solely with the objective to understand users, their behaviours and needs, there’s a gain in using immersive methodologies and techniques such as fieldwork, interviews, group discussions or diaries.
By using Ethnography, we are able to collect different type of data (from observation and oral speech and written speech) and have a more holistic approach to the needs in order to understand the HOW and WHY for the gathered functional and non-functional requirements.
Our main goal is to build a vision rather than just presenting a research tool kit.