👫2 ENGAGE: Who are we designing for?

Identify the individuals, groups, and organisations who are affected by the challenge. Clarify who the primary users are.

1. Why this step matters

Design doesn’t start with solutions—it starts with people. Before we begin designing, we need to understand who we are designing for. Yet this is often overlooked or based on assumptions. This step helps you raise the resolution: to identify users and stakeholders, clarify their roles and perspectives, and begin to understand their relationship to the challenge at hand.

Users and stakeholders:

• Users are the people who directly experience the service—for example, citizens applying for a benefit, or staff using an internal HR system.

• Stakeholders are people and organisations who influence, deliver or are affected by the service—for example, managers, partner agencies or IT teams.

2. What this step helps you do

• Identify key users, stakeholders and affected groups

• Understand the diversity of needs, expectations and contexts

• Build a shared view of whose experiences matter most in the process

3. How to approach it

Start by mapping what you already know—and don’t know—about the people connected to the challenge. Think beyond obvious categories: look for those who may be hidden, marginalised, or easily overlooked. This early framing shapes how inclusive and effective your discovery work will be.

4. Suggested tools

Tool	Outputs
Stakeholder Map	A visual overview of the people and groups connected to the challenge.
User Characteristics	A quick way to capture core users with what you already know (or assume) about different user types, to guide further research.

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