Discovery concepts guide

“Opportunity” is the term used in HCD to refer to areas of need in service offerings.

You can find opportunities by viewing your insights through the lens of your organization’s business offerings or capabilities. Opportunities are the fields in which your organization can innovate and offer new or revised products, services, and systems.

Why find opportunities?

Opportunities reveal real needs expressed by participants during the research phase.

Let’s be clear. Opportunities are not solutions; they pave the way towards solutions. Opportunities identify an area within a service system that needs to be addressed and made better. Opportunities identify the exact problem we’re trying to solve.

Once you identify an opportunity, you can either extend the team’s support to address that opportunity, or you can share your recommendations to address the matter with internal and/or external partners who are in a position to effect a change. By identifying and pursuing opportunities, your agency can apply energy and resources to those areas with the highest need, and/or to those areas that could have the maximum positive impact on the lives of your customers.

What do opportunities look like?

Opportunities can surface anywhere in your organization, including:

• Touchpoints: This is where the research team maps the specific points where the customer or employee interacts with the agency.
• Root Issues: This is where the research team identifies the root cause of complicated challenges, even if the root cause is multifaceted and complex.
• Important Moments: This is where the research team identifies those moments that matter most to customers as they interact with the agency.
• Best Practices: This is where the research team identifies where in the agency people are doing it right, towards the goal of spreading these best practices more broadly.
• Pain Points: This is where the research team identifies where the customer or employee experiences a problem in the system.