In the Discovery Phase (Unit 2: Discover, the focus is on hunting for insights by listening to users and stakeholders. However, for gathering data many researchers develop hypotheses in advance and transform these into, for example, survey questions. Even though this is a valuable and good research practice, it is counterproductive for frame development. The assumptions are already framed and other frames will not surface in using these kinds of approaches.

Two men conducting an interview

Open-ended interviews, observing users or even participating in an ethnographic approach will enable you to discover other ways of seeing things. By listening well and inducing new frames on the basis of your interviews, you can avoid validating your own assumptions. Look at the following example. For an exhibition on food, you interview visitors of a museum and discover that some no longer trust the food industry. This distrust is caused by (fake?) news about unhealthy ingredients, or about how the growing need for palm oil causes deforestation. This may result in a new frame, such as ‘food: facts and fiction,’ that may possibly spark public discourse.
We will discuss these listening methods, like an open-ended interview, in Unit 2: Discover.