Aglet

Prioritize Unknowns Before a Discovery Decision

The final days of discovery can fill with low-value polish while a critical unknown remains unresolved. Prioritize what could change scope, audience, feasibility, or outcome. Compare the value of another focused round with the cost of carrying uncertainty into a harder-to-reverse decision.

Decide where the work belongs

  1. Identify reversal risk

    For each unknown, describe which decision it could change and what happens if the team proceeds incorrectly. Give weight to excluded users, blocked outcomes, policy constraints, and assumptions that a later phase would make expensive to unwind.

  2. Compare learning paths

    Review whether observation, interview, prototype, experiment, data review, or constraint check can answer the unknown. Compare method fit, time, participant access, and remaining interpretation risk. Do not call an unknown low risk just because it is difficult to measure.

  3. Choose a decision queue

    Select the unknowns to answer now, the owner, the method, and the decision review. Defer others with a trigger and explicit boundary. If evidence is sufficient for a reversible exploration but not a full commitment, name that narrower path.

What to carry forward

The priority output is an unknowns queue tied to reversal risk, user consequence, method, owner, and review. Answer the unknown most likely to change the decision. Preserve a narrower reversible next step when full readiness has not been earned.

Technical background: GOV.UK user research guidance.

Keep the decision with the work.

Use a Work Item in Aglet to record the problem, the evidence you have, and the next decision. Add an owner and priority, then keep updates in the discussion so the next person can follow the reasoning.

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